


The Fleeting

by cleodoxa



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Bandom - Freeform, M/M, Steampunk, my chemical romance - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-12
Updated: 2010-07-12
Packaged: 2017-10-10 12:53:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/99998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleodoxa/pseuds/cleodoxa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steampunk-ish au. Gerard and Mikey leave the School for Orphans to find adventure and soon pick up Frank, Ray and Bob on the way. Gerard develops a crush on Frank. When Frank vanishes and Gerard has to marry him in order to save him, it seems it's now or never to find whether Frank feels the same way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steampunk-ish au. Gerard and Mikey leave the School for Orphans to find adventure and soon pick up Frank, Ray and Bob on the way. Gerard develops a crush on Fank. When Frank vanishes and Gerard has to marry him in order to save him, it seems it's now or never to find whether Frank feels the same way.

  
  
  
  
  


**Entry tags:**

| 

  
[bandom](http://cleodoxa.livejournal.com/tag/bandom), [bbb](http://cleodoxa.livejournal.com/tag/bbb), [fic](http://cleodoxa.livejournal.com/tag/fic), [the fleeting](http://cleodoxa.livejournal.com/tag/the%20fleeting)  
  
  
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**Title**: The Fleeting  
**Band**: My Chemical Romance  
**Word Count**: 23,878  
**Rating**: R  
**Disclaimer**: Not true, no harm meant.  
**Warnings**: None  
**Summary**: Steampunk-ish au. Gerard and Mikey leave the School for Orphans to find adventure and soon pick up Frank, Ray and Bob on the way. Gerard develops a crush on Fank. When Frank vanishes and Gerard has to marry him in order to save him, it seems it's now or never to find whether Frank feels the same way.

It is well past time for Gerard to think about leaving the School for Orphans and going out into the world, but none of the teachers have mentioned this to him or suggested how he should make his way. The prospect rather daunts him so he waits months before raising the issue. Now he waits outside the Headmaster's office, slightly nervous. He squints at the black and white tile floor to see the black tile stand clear from the white in a diamond pattern. He looks up as someone leaves the office, and knocks on the door.

"Sir, I was just wondering," he says when he's sat opposite the Headmaster, "What I should do now. When – I mean, I can't stay here forever. Are there any apprenticeships you think I should do?" He asks this dutifully, because that's what people tend to do when they leave, but he can't get really enthusiastic about the prospect. It's not as if he wants to leave Mikey, but maybe he could come too and well, he _can't_ stay here forever and he doesn't want to. Not much happens here and Gerard knows he'll probably appreciate that more when he has to deal with the constant shift and turmoil outside relatively stagnant institutions. Right now, though, he wants to get out there.

The Headmaster looks a little surprised. "Well, I guess you could do something if you wanted," he says. "Manufactories are always taking people on. The master engineers usually prefer to take on someone with a flair for intricate construction. And then there's the sea – they always need more people to keep the sea down."

Gerard can't help pulling a face. It sounds very uninspiring, and it's depressing to be so obviously seen as lacking anything to really offer. He does know he doesn't want to get into the sea business; trying to regulate the tides with time running so low and volatile is impossible. Rather late in the day, something occurs to him; he doesn't actually need the Headmaster to decide any of this for him. The older orphans usually do consult the teachers and allow them to arrange matters for them, but Gerard's free to leave and go wherever he wants.

Slowly, most of his mind on this sudden prospect of possibilities, he says, "Maybe you could look into manufactory places for me?"

He walks slowly down the corridor after leaving the office. The corridor's lined with windows and it's been a warm afternoon for a couple of weeks now. Gerard stands in one of the grids of light thrown on the floor and absently watches the shadows of branches sway underneath his shoes as if he's standing on a tightrope. Where would he go if he just went out there, into the forest? What do people do? He could always try and find something. They get a few old newsletters from times to time, and it sounds as if going on quests to find hidden things, or recall things that have been lost is one of the things people do. Oh. He knows what he'd like to find. A time box. A time capsule, a little supply of days squirreled away, each one different. Trying to track one of those down would be both an adventure and more help to the Persistence Cause than working in a manufactory.

Having come to a conclusion, Gerard rushes downstairs. He sees Mikey's face, pale and vacant in the crowd coming out of Theory class. Gerard darts through and holds Mikey's elbow as the group trundles off to Invention, leaving the corridor quiet.

"Would you like to leave? Would that be okay? This is a thought I just had," he says.

"Where do you want to go?" asks Mikey.

"I thought we could look for a time box."

"That'd be really cool. Yeah, I want to go. It's not like they've really got anything else to teach."

Frank Iero comes out of the classroom, kept by the teacher, probably, and nearly walks into them. He screws up his face crossly as he just misses mashing it into Gerard's neck. Gerard and Mikey watch him disappear into Invention and Gerard says, "Okay, go now, we'll plan later."

They don't really get a chance to speak to each other privately, though. Gerard thinks about the few times he can remember someone finding a time box; the way time flows easier as soon as it's opened, the excitement and relief in the air, how the time boxes seem to create a season of events so that for a long time afterwards strange things happen all in the same vein of atmosphere. It's one of the few ways of making things happen instead of being happened to and he's glad he thought of it.

*

Later Gerard lies awake in the dark dormitory counting the minutes and sees the pale of Mikey's pyjamas as he half rises and waves at him cautiously. He slides out of bed and tiptoes out, his clothes under his arm. They run down the stairs, albeit on tiptoe. Gerard had kind of hoped it would be dark but the afternoon persisted.

"Should we take anything?" asks Mikey, pulling on his clothes and leaving his pyjamas on the floor.

Gerard hesitates then dashes into the common room and picks up a few newsletters. "They might come in useful," he says and puts them in his pocket. He looks around him and says, "I think breeches and shirts and stuff grow on trees everywhere. We're not gonna need anything else, are we?"

So they unbolt the big front door and set off down the path. Gerard always forgets about the patch of night in the garden until he walks into it. For a moment he looks about confusedly and it occurs to him that lanterns might be something they should take.

"Hey, Gerard, Mikey?" comes a voice from behind him, and Gerard is unreasonably creeped out until Mikey says, "Frank?"

Gerard finds Frank's arm and having remembered the probable cause of the darkness, pulls him through to the other side.

"What do you want?" asks Gerard.

"Where are you going? You're leaving for good, aren't you? I want to come."

"Why should we take you?" asks Gerard. He doesn't know Frank well at all; he's younger than him and he's only been at this orphanage for a year or so. He's always seemed sort of annoying and if it's a choice between taking or leaving him, Gerard would rather leave him. "You don't even know where we're going."

"So where are you going?"

"Why should I tell you?" says Gerard, looking back at the house as if to say, how do I know you won't tell. Then he remembers, "No one can stop me leaving anyway."

"Come on. It's good to travel in groups. I want to get out of here," says Frank.

Gerard looks at Mikey. He remembers that maybe Frank knows more about the forest than they do. "We're going to try and find a time box."

"Really? That's awesome. Do you know where to look?"

"No. Do you?"

"No. But how is an extra pair of eyes not a good thing?"

"I think we should let him," says Mikey. "We don't have to stay with him if we don't want to."

"Okay," says Gerard, who's beginning to feel childish, like he's bickering about whether Frank's allowed to join their game.

Frank charges off and climbs up the high wrought iron gate. Gerard worries he'll have to do the same thing but it's not padlocked. As he opens it he remembers the lanterns but he can't be bothered to go back now.

"Okay, we're off," says Frank.

They step out into the narrow path, pressed by trees on all sides. They stand still and spin slowly about, looking not at the trees, constantly flickering as they are replaced by other trees, the forest struggling to incarnate all the trees that had ever existed, but up at the sky. There is a roar of engines in the air, faint but intensifying and fading as air-ships approach and are lost to the eye. It's hard to see above the canopy of the tree-tops from here, but air-ships cross the little lane of sky Gerard can see all the time. They're varied and most of them are very elaborate. Some look like grand houses, some, making a particularly loud grinding noise, are heavy, with whirring blades attached. Some have brightly colored hot air balloons attached, or rope ladders dangling down. Some are stationary, attached to other ships with semi-permanent pavements laid down between them with shops set up on them. Gerard can't see anything big enough to be a manufactory; he thinks the device district is a little way off.

Gerard feels his neck begin to crick and he returns to his own level. The forest is empty as far as he can see; the forest is mostly the territory of adventurers. The air is where all the industry, the organisation is. Down here you're at the mercy of violent storms, prowling angels, Murderers, the Horsemen and ghosts. Gerard kind of likes that they're not taking the safe option. He looks at the others in a last minute check that everyone wants to go, before they all get hopelessly lost. Mikey's just taking his eyes off the sky, a little smile on his face and Frank's scuffing his toe on a tree, waiting to get going.

So then they are off. It's a lot of trudging, as Gerard knew it would be, but this expectation doesn't exactly transform the trudging experience. It's livened up whenever they spot a unicorn. They try and follow them because people often find things when unicorns are about. Things do seem to fall on them more when they're chasing unicorns – acorns and conkers from the trees and little twisted metal machine parts from the air-ships. Frank yells when a pair of mechanical hands lands on his shoulder, kneading it as the fists clench and release. He bats them away but picks them up when Gerard has his back turned and places them on his head. They only hang on loosely and Gerard hears a soft scrunching sound before the creeping feeling of something stirring in his hair. He shoves the hands down Frank's shirt and Gerard and Mikey can't help laughing at Frank's shriek when his nipple's pinched.

Mikey puts his hand out towards the unicorns like they're going to come and smell it. A couple look like they're thinking about it but then, like the others, they turn and run. The three of them will chase after it until they lose sight of it, then try to make their way back to the path. It's not long before they lose the path, which means more tripping over roots and ducking under branches. Gerard is beginning to wonder if digging a hole to see if they find anything would make a nice change, or if they could maybe find a ghost, when they reach a clearing and see two unicorns fighting, horns locked. They walk cautiously into the clearing. The unicorns don't seem to notice them but they do stagger about in their struggle so they have to keep edging away. One of the unicorns pulls away to try its horn at a different angle and the other unicorn charges into empty air right at their little group. They yell and crash through the trees, and fall into a bog.

"This is going to feel so gross later," says Frank.

"It's not gross now?" asks Mikey.

"Well yeah, but now I'm not so hot."

"We should search the bog," says Gerard. "It might be a sign."

They try and wipe the mud off against the tree trunks, and find sticks to prod the mud with. Mikey and Frank use their sticks in tandem to pull up something that turns out to be the skeleton of some creature from ancient times. They look at it quite closely, just in case there are directions inscribed on its bones or something, but no luck.

They give up on the bog and set off again. The mellow afternoon is showing signs of wear; there's a wind blowing and Gerard feels that jumpy uneven feeling that means the seconds aren't playing in order, or are missing one out every now and then. It always gives him a headache. They come to two trees with cords stretched out between them so they have to climb through, then see that most of the trees here are the same.

"Are they harps?" says Gerard. "I think they're harps." It looks as if the trees are growing them naturally, the frames protuberances of the trunk and the strings some kind of vegetative matter. They're making a faint, tinny noise; the wind seems to be plucking the strings. There's a roar Gerard thinks might be an air-ship for a moment until the sky goes dark and he sees a bolt of lightning. The wind steps up suddenly, loud and strong, so that the harps jangle discordantly. They look stupidly at the sky as if expecting the threat to be rescinded. But as the harps settle into two or three only slightly discordant tunes at once, they hear the sound of galloping hooves. They turn and run without words, trying to get out of the harp area so they can run quicker.

The galloping sound is close behind them; the Horseman must have seen them. Gerard doesn't want to listen too closely in case there's more than one of them. He hears another sound and realises it's hail when it stings his face and neck. He tries to keep Mikey and Frank in sight in the gloom so he knows they haven't vanished and stops, confused, when a third figure looms into view.

"Stop!" it yells, and Mikey backs onto Gerard's foot when they realise the other guy is being menaced by a dinosaur. It's tall and has some sharp teeth. A top hat has fallen onto the side of its head; Gerard wishes it would fall over its eye. The blond guy is holding one parasol like a shield and another, rolled up in its leaf, like a sword. The dinosaur is now looking at the three new people, and also glances into the distance for the sound of hooves.

Gerard yells as the Horseman makes it into view, or rather the giant horse does. Blond Guy grabs at Frank and shouts, "Run this way!" as the dinosaur distracts the Horseman by imagining it can tackle the horse. Gerard is quite sure it will be trampled.

They start running again, but once they get away from the scene they slow down, unable to keep it up. Gerard thinks he nearly vanishes for a while as time absorbs him or, stretched particularly thin, fails to support him, or whatever it is that happens. He falls back into himself with a jolt and a feeling of cold clear blankness just past.

"Here," says Blond Guy. There's a rickety little shelter made of bits of trees and a sheet of metal. They crawl into it – it's not quite big enough and they try to plug the gap at the end with the parasols. Gerard hugs his knees and takes a moment to appreciate how icy his lips feel. They don't feel quite right when he rubs his hand across them and he wonders if it's Metamorphosis, because now Gerard remembers what actually was essential equipment.

"So, I'm Bob," says Blond Guy.

"Hi Bob," says Frank. "Do you live here?"

"I got here ... well, it'd already been afternoon for a while. I'm moving on when the storm's over. I'm on a mission."

"Really?" says Gerard. "You mean for the Persistence Cause?"

Bob reaches for a bag, rather sodden, and draws out a box. He holds it out so they can hear a frenzied uneven ticking.

"A time bomb, right?" says Mikey.

"An activist group hired me to find an angel and throw this at them. Should blow them up to Heaven for a bit."

"Wow, tracking _down_ an angel, that's different," says Gerard. Angels prowl around and steal and destroy time, trying to force the last of humanity to give up and accept the apocalypse. Time bombs, a highly concentrated and unstable quantity of time, are the only weapon humans have strong enough to fight angels. The less activist minded argue that the bombs are as much a drain on resources as the angels, at least when they are used not during struggles but as a gesture of defiance.

"Did they already pay you? How do they know you're gonna do it?" asks Frank.

"They paid me half now. I've got an IOU thing; if I show it to any group afterwards I'll get the rest then."

"We're –" begins Gerard, but then the storm gets really fierce. The babel of voices from other times comes through; Gerard understands only tiny snatches once in a long while. So many voices clamouring at once as if something terribly urgent is under discussion, though he knows they're all talking different languages and, originally, one at a time though they're now all played at once. The rain pours down; rolls of thunder compete with the voices. Peering out of the shelter, they see the forest struggling to contain obtruding scenes. Mostly people and animals flickering round at great speed all on top of one another, with long repetitive dwelling on a scene showed clear; a building falling down, and another of somebody watering a garden. Gerard thinks the fabric of the shelter vanishes for whiles at a time. He doesn't think they are themselves for whiles at a time.

And then they're sitting watching the rain get slower and slower. He feels tired; he guesses he's been staying up since they left the orphanage.

"Are we all still here?" Gerard asks.

"My leg's on fire but I think it's alright," says Bob. They all turn and look at Bob. There is indeed flame flickering about one of his legs that doesn't seem to catch on anything else.

"Doesn't it hurt?" asks Frank.

"Not that much. Have you guys got any kit?"

"Nope. I was just going to ask you." Gerard feels his mouth again. "Does my mouth look alright to you?" he asks, his lips making a light clacking sound when he talks.

"No," says Mikey. "I think it's gone to stone. And I'm fucked up, before you ask." Gerard sort of pats Mikey to make sure he really is still there and discovers what the problem is. Parts of Mikey's body have gone to rag and stuffing in strips from the shoulders down.

"Okay. Okay. We'll sort this out," says Gerard, who is more than a little freaked out. He'd forgotten that they shouldn't move without Readjustors and Neutralisers which are thought to act as a stabilising influence and are usually able to reverse Metamorphosis. The School for Orphans had a lot of battered equipment it didn't seem to need often and kept locked up, out of mind as well as out of sight so neither Gerard nor Mikey had thought of it. Gerard doesn't think they'll last without it.

"We'll have to do some work somewhere, get money for some kit or hire it or something," says Frank. "I feel kind of insane right now, don't know what's wrong."

Gerard looks at him. He looks blurry. He thinks Frank's twitching but – "It's like I'm seeing two of you at once. Are there actually two of you in there?"

"Could be?/_Something's_ in here," says Frank.

"Okay, there's two of you," says Bob as Frank cocks his head like he's listening to himself and opens his mouth again. "I thought of a deal we could make. Like I said, I got some money here. I'll buy us some kit if you want to help me track down an angel."

Gerard and Mikey look at each other. "Well," says Gerard. "We're looking for a time box. So I don't see why going with you would interfere with our aim at all. Yeah?" He looks at Mikey and Frank.

They nod and Frank says, "We'll practically be activists all by ourselves!/ Great idea. Look forward to working with you," shaking Bob's hand with mock solemnity.

Bob looks pleased. "Do you guys want to sleep for a bit, then we can go find an engineer?"

They sleep as best they can in the damp, practically sitting up. Gerard is glad to crawl out when they agree they've made their best attempt at sleep. They look a shambles even apart from the Metamorphosis, their clothes muddy and torn.

"So how are we going to get up there?" says Mikey, looking at the sky. There's only one airship visible. It's stopped raining but the sky is still full of thick grey clouds. "And I think they've all tried to fly above the clouds."

"We'd better walk for a while. There's usually a few places with a ladder down, it's not like they don't want custom," says Frank.

"Do you know a lot about, you know, the world?" asks Gerard.

"Not that much. I was in another school but it got destroyed -- I don't think it was even a storm, it just went and most of the people too. Then I worked in a manufactory for a while, and then there was a check for underage workers and then I got sent to that school."

"What was the manufactory like?" asks Gerard, wanting to validate his choice a little.

"What you'd expect/Really boring. Hard work," says Frank.

They walk on, staring up at the sky. Finally they see one lone little ship with a rope ladder dangling, an engineer sitting on the deck working on something. He doesn't even notice as they all clamber up one by one.

"Hi?" says Gerard. The guy turns round and his eyes light up so that Gerard's a bit taken aback.

"Customers!" he says. He looks around at the absence of other ships. "I guess at least getting rained on pays off."

"Do you do Neutralisers, Readjustors, that stuff?" asks Bob.

"How many do you want? One for all of you?" He doesn't really look as if that's the answer he's hoping for.

They nod. "Okay. Well, I do have three of each and a fourth Neutraliser but I'm missing a Readjustor." He pauses. "Do you think you could wait while I build one? It shouldn't take long."

"You don't need to do that, we could just try and find someone else," says Bob.

"To be honest it'd be really helpful if you could wait," says the engineer. "But only if you don't have to go somewhere right away. I've only got the parts for a few kinds of machine, you see, and not many of those, and I can't afford to buy more right now so it's going to be a juggling act-"

Gerard isn't really sure how to respond to all this; it seems a bit unprofessional sharing your business worries with your customers. "Did you just start up business?" he asks. The engineer looks a bit young when he looks at his face instead of the frizziness around it, streaked with oil.

"Actually, I'm an apprentice," he admits. "The engineer vanished in the last time storm and I've been trying to keep things going. I'm not sure what else to do."

They sit down to wait while the engineer/apprentice gets to work on the Readjustor. There's a lot of banging and streams of red and blue sparks. In between the banging he asks them what they're doing in the forest and they tell him about their united quests and maybe they kind of talk it up a bit. He seems a pretty nifty engineer and, true to his word, it's not long before there's a freshly minted Readjustor on the worktable.

While they're making the transaction, the engineer gets a wistful look. "This is probably rude of me, but would there be room for me to come with you? Feel totally free to say no but I've got this sinking feeling I won't be able to keep this place up and _everyone_ wants to be an engineer these days. I just think it would be really cool to get down there where the Cause is really fought and do something people are going to feel the effect of."

They all look at each other again and shrug and nod. "Sure, why not," says Gerard. "Glad to have you, man."

"So what's your name?" asks Frank.

"Oh! Ray." Ray rattles around the air-ship packing things up while the rest of them turn on their Neutralisers and strap Readjustors to their wrists. The only Metamorphosis Gerard has experienced before is things like his hair growing longer or shorter so he's curious to see if the machines make him feel different now. But as usual it's just the mildest of hums in his blood. He doesn't touch his mouth for a while in case he jinxes it, but when he does it's flesh again.

"Maybe we could take the ship with us," says Bob. "I don't know, maybe it would tie us down. But it'd be good to have somewhere to sleep."

"I don't think so, my boss might turn up again, and anyway, he doesn't own it. The same landlord owns a lot of engineering air ships round here – that's his mark, look – and he cares about getting his money. Not making the rent was one of the things I was thinking of," says Ray, looking a little alarmed. Gerard thinks apart from all that Ray wants to get away properly, into a new adventure entirely.

"I guess not, then," says Bob.

They all set off back down the rope ladder, newly acquired equipment on their backs, Ray carrying a big bag full of machine parts. And they wander, and they find a house in the trees, dark and overgrown and sinister. They don't pay much mind to the sinisterness because anything dark and old will look like that, but then they go in, in case of hidden treasure or somewhere to sleep, and can't get out. Ever stretching loops of black flag-stoned corridors. They panic and run shouting in both directions. They find doors and stupidly venture into dark rooms on their own. Gerard's room has a candle in the corner – a large dining room with dark red walls and a shiny long table, and both the walls and the table crowd him into corners.

"_Please_" he pleads, half sobbing, half laughing, hysterical maybe or just disbelieving. In the end, crouched in a corner he sees light, and slithering under the table as it gets lower and lower, he pushes himself out through the little door in the wall.

Frank and Ray are out in the corridor, looking a little streaked and mangled themselves. The three of them laugh unreasonably as each section of Gerard hits the floor and he finally uncoils himself and staggers upright. They roam around still laughing, looking for Mikey and Bob. Mikey lands on them from a trapdoor and Bob pops up between Gerard's feet just before they turn a corner and see the front door, open, ahead of them.

They leave the house and don't look back. "I hope there _wasn't_ a time box in there. I mean, it's supposed to be hard," says Ray.

"Shit, I never looked, there totally could have been," says Frank and almost does look back but it feels like there are rules for getting away. Gerard would almost want to go back and try again because Ray's right; you're supposed to do something right when there are other ways of doing something. But he can still remember that feeling like an exhale, a letting go, in the doorway and he's sure the house could and would do otherwise.

And so they go on. They buy newsletters from the air-ships and try to make for the nearest places where angels were sighted but it's very difficult. Everything is too unstable; someone at point B feels as if they are always or at least usually at point B but for anyone trying to make their way from point A to B it's almost impossible to join the points; it's as if the stretch between is a drawbridge swinging in the wind. Gerard feels better when they come to a place where steam trains emerge from the ground. They have to race to jump into a carriage before it leaves them behind, and it's all very dangerous as it zooms between the trees – the trees and the trains conspire to miss each other more often than not – and every so often jumps into the air or burrows beneath the ground. What they really gain is the sensation of movement, rather than any real help with their quest objects.

Frank is kind of a pain, always trying to see if he can jump off the train and on again, or get onto the roof, or go up to the front to see if anyone's actually driving it. He never can catch up with the train once he's jumped off so they all have to get off too. He tries to make Gerard climb onto things with him no matter how often Gerard explains that he is not really a _physical _ daredevil.

There seem to be more people on the trains than in the forest, and they ask them if they've seen anything useful. They're usually looking for something themselves, vanished people, ghosts up for ghoul game, inventors they've heard of with better machines for Metamorphosis, a whole crowd of pilgrims filling up most of the carriages looking for "the lost city of Atlantis." Everyone has only the faintest of ideas how to find what they themselves are searching for, and no one has anything to offer others.

Ray's been saying for a while maybe he should have taken the air-ship; a vantage point would be a help looking for angels at least. Then a steam train springs out of the ground underneath Gerard's feet so that he flies into the air and is fortunate enough to be caught in a tree. It all happens very quickly and for a moment there's four startled faces looking around, their mouths open in an "O". Then they spot Gerard, a branch hooked firmly in his waistband, bobbing up and down in the air a little, and fall about laughing. Gerard wouldn't mind, but "Guys, I don't actually know how I'm going to get down."

Ray unsteadily tries standing on Bob's shoulders to reach Gerard, but it is very unsteady and it doesn't look as if he can reach.

"Okay," says Bob. "I'm going to climb up and get you." He sounds very certain, and the climbing part goes well enough but the branch Gerard is hanging from won't take his weight and he can't reach him from where he is. "Throw me that stick!" he shouts down, and spends several minutes poking Gerard with this stick, trying to hook it securely in his jacket. He manages to lift Gerard up and dump him face down on the branch before his strength and Gerard's shirt give out. Bob glances up while Gerard is toeing for the nice secure crook in the boughs below before the branch snaps, and says "Hey."

"Hey what?" asks Mikey from the ground.

"Is that an air-ship?"

"Isn't it a house?" asks Gerard once he's got reasonably comfortable. He sees something quite small and square and wooden, more a shed than a house, really. "Oh! It's got wings! Wow, it must be old." He can see metal wings, covered in little plates of metal shaped like feathers.

"It looks like they'd just been invented," says Bob. "You think it'd be any good to us?"

It doesn't matter whether Gerard thinks it would or not because Ray wants to look at it and climbs up to do so. He peers at it and exclaims in fascinated horror at the primitive technology. "You can hardly call it an air-ship, it's basically a flying house." So instead of climbing down, everyone else climbs up and holds the house up as well as they can (not really very well) while Ray tinkers with it. It's very tiring and twigs keep going up Gerard's nose but he does feel a little thrill when the wings suddenly flap, slowly but with a wide span and there's a clatter like heavy rain as bunches of shoes are knocked down.

Finally the ship is free of the tree and staying up of its own accord, hovering a little above the tree, Ray astride the roof. The wings are red with rust and the door hangs open to show the inside full of dust and must and debris. It's so rare to find stuff that's old but not from before the end of the world; it seems to get eaten up. Ray gets the ship down to the forest floor and they try to sweep it out and clean the windows. Then when they're ready it takes off, unsteadily, the beat of the wings vibrating through the ship.

Gerard and Mikey are the only one who've never travelled by air before and it takes a while for them to stop crossing from window to window and exclaiming how powerful it makes them feel.

"We can go anywhere we want! The trees aren't in the way!" says Mikey.

There's a lot of traffic and they can't leave the ship to its own devices. There's a lot more people around too, inside the ships and they can't just do what they like and not care about the noise or whatever, so it's less free, too. When they come to a device district they race through it to get away from the fumes.

They settle into a routine soon enough and stop looking out windows unless they're on flying and angel-watch duty. The rest of them learn how to steer to give Ray some time off. He's fired up by his success with the air-ship; he goes back to invention which is apparently a big enthusiasm of his. He comes up with ideas for things that would help them in their search; telescopes that relay information from miles away, whatever obstructs the view, sensors set to detect things that are WANTED, STRANGE, HIDDEN, Attractors of Significant Circumstances – "Like that house," says Ray, "Only if we knew something weird was going to happen we wouldn't mind."

He does a days' work for engineers here and there so he can buy machine parts – not enough to seriously build any prototypes, but to dabble. Gerard wishes he understood it more but it all sounds so interesting at first and so boring when he asks how it _works_.

*

One day – it's actually night and has been for ages; a warm night with a sweet breeze, granted, and the sky is lit up in patches with lanterns – Frank is standing at the open door of the ship, a deep drop a step away.

"Is that ship deserted?" he half mutters.

"Huh?" says Gerard, going over.

"Look, that ship is all dark. I can't remember when it got here but ever since I noticed it I've never seen anyone."

The ship in question is shaped like a coiled cobra, so it's probably like a seashell inside. The business end is in the hooded head; the only light in the ship is a red flame flickering from the cobra's tongue.

"We should go look at it," says Frank. He's bored; they've been in the same place since night fell because of flying conditions. The cobra ship is tied to the same tether as theirs and it's only a step or two to tightrope-walk with something to grab on both sides.

The tops of the coils are flat but Gerard still scrambles up to the seat in the head. Frank takes a little longer before plopping down next to him. They sit in silence for a moment. Frank opens his mouth then stands up. "The ship's come loose," he says.

Gerard peers over and sees the rope unwinding. "Let it drift a little, we can get it back."

They sit back down again. Gerard hears Frank sigh, a little sleepy. "Do you feel bad we haven't found anything yet?" Frank asks.

"I'm okay," says Gerard, a little surprised. "I mean, I hope something happens soon even if it's not something big but ... I like having something to look for. Why, are you getting pissed off with it?" Frank isn't the patient type, he supposes, but he does seem like the fixed type.

"No, I just ... I just wondered what you were thinking. It's your thing really, well, apart from Bob's angel."

"I don't think it's my thing. Everyone's been here almost since I thought of it. It's not like you're working for me and might let me down. We're a team," Gerard protests, and then thinks he sounds almost too perkily earnest.

Frank nods. Gerard thinks he looks pleased. "Okay. I just wondered, that's all." Frank fiddles with the controls and the ship puts on a spurt of speed. Gerard can feel himself making a pleased face in the dim. It's nice to feel like Frank isn't just here to get away from the orphanage.

There's a shout and Gerard and Frank look round to see their own ship on the move, quite far behind them now. There's a couple of figures crouched on the roof that don't look like Mikey, Ray or Bob.

"Get back here!" they hear. Gerard doesn't want to go back; they've been stationary for the longest time since they started. He looks at Frank and presses the accelerator. They shoot off; this ship is so much faster than theirs it seems to skid at breakneck speed through the air rather than fly. The other ship soon falls too far behind for them to hear anything from it and it's easy to pretend there's no reason they shouldn't be flying so that the wind rushes past them, stroking their cheeks and roaring faintly in their ears. Frank pushes the wheel in sharp, sweeping strokes on either side while Gerard gingerly jabs at the control panel with a finger. The air-ship dips and swirls and ricochets. Gerard clings to the rail and laughs breathlessly, his hair blown over his face. In the end he gets tired and can't ignore a guilty awareness of their own ship left behind probably with the same people they hijacked this ship from. Frank keeps taking a hand off the wheel to clamp a hand over either of his cold ears.

"Yeah?" asks Gerard, jerking his head behind them and Frank nods and sits down, the ship slowly skidding to a halt. They wait until they begin to get annoyed and concerned, craning their necks to peer into the dark sky behind us.

"What if we've gone and got ourselves _lost_?" says Frank, in alarmist tones though looking unconcerned.

Gerard is glad they had to wait so long because it means they're actually relieved when their ship and the owners of this one catch up with them.

"What kept you?" calls Frank.

"They insisted on driving. I bet I'd have been faster seeing as I actually know the ship," says Ray, moderately aggrieved.

A tall, skinny guy leaps on the head just above them. "That ship is such a piece of shit I'm not even wondering why you took mine. Out," he says, bending his knees and making a mad-staring-eyes face at them.

Ray takes the wheel back with an exaggeratedly officious look and lines their ship up closer with the cobra ship. There's a couple of other guys and a girl who cross over as Gerard and Frank take a little jump in the opposite direction. And there's a ghost bringing up the rear, a girl, looking placidly insular as she takes moments to realise the others have crossed. Gerard saw a ghost once when he was little but he doesn't remember it well. "Are you – you _are_, right?" he says, looking at her twice. She's solid, so for a moment he's not even sure what he noticed about her. He thinks she might flicker once or twice but so slightly it's hard to catch. But there's a pale line all about her, not bright enough to be a halo but as if there's a whole dimension just behind her, blocked from sight by her body.

"I'm playing a ghoul game," the live girl says, turning round. Dark hair, face pale and heavy with tiredness, her voice low.

The faces of the guys with her grow more serious. The tall skinny guy with the purple waistcoat who seems to think he's in charge makes an attempt to clear his. "You ever seen a ghoul game before? You want to come and have a drink in our ship? Watch and learn, it'll be you one day."

"Does it really happen to everybody?" asks Gerard.

"Plenty of times other things happen to them instead," says Bob.

"Come on, no hard feelings," says one of the other cobra-ship people. He opens up a trapdoor by the control seat and one by one they all disappear down it. Purple Waistcoat stands by to let his friends pass, the two girls last. He gives the ghost girl a strange, reckoning look as she passes.

The trapdoor leads to a short slide that takes Gerard by surprise. Then he follows the others downhill through a twisty corridor that is indeed like the inside of a seashell before they get to a big room with screened-off hammocks and a table. It's stuffy and someone opens a window, or rather, a grate.

Purple Waistcoat stands by the table looking nervously about him as if he hasn't seen the place before. "Gabe," he says absently, pointing to himself, swivelling round to introduce the others. "And I don't know this one's name," he says, waving at the ghost who has sat down opposite Victoria.

"Greta," she says. She and Victoria both have their hands clasped on the table in front of them and are looking at each other in a cool, businesslike manner.

Gabe pours everyone a glass of brandy. "Do you drink, sweetheart?" he asks Greta, slightly mocking. She shakes her head, not bothering to look at him. He takes a deep breath and sits down. No one drinks anymore unless it's alcohol. Gerard has had it before but it always feels like he has to drink too much of it to get used to the whole thing. He gulps the brandy down too fast now.

Victoria draws out a pack of cards from her bodice and deals Greta and herself a hand each. Gerard was expecting a duel or something so he's taken aback when he has to sit there watching them shuffling, exchanging cards or laying them on the table according to rules he's not familiar with. The room is thick with quietness; everybody is watching every movement like a hawk. Gerard finds his heart pounding every time they turn over a card even though he doesn't know what it means. He finishes his glass and Gabe insists on halting the game for a moment to refill everyone's glasses. There's a moment when everyone almost rises out their seats, leaning right over and holding their breath but then Greta waves a card at them and draws another hand towards her from the table. Gabe thumps his fists on the table.

Gerard feels almost uncomfortable looking at Victoria because if she loses this game and can't find another ghost to win against very soon, she's going to die. She's the real focal point of this scene which means, contradictorily, that it seems rude to look at her. But he does when the game turns out not to be over. She definitely looks ill, but she's watching Greta and the cards in a way that seems excited rather than fearful. Gerard can see you might enjoy something that could be the last thing you did, the thing that everything depended on. He goes off for a while wondering if he'll have to play a ghoul game at some point and what it'll be like, and how his whole life might be leading up to one point and he'll never know until then if he's going to win or lose. He shakes out of it, worried he might miss whatever happens at the end.

At the end Victoria and Greta have one card each. They hold them up and then Greta puts hers on the table and they both stand up. Gerard is almost sure Victoria has won but he's not sure because they both have that calm, businesslike look still. Victoria fishes the little hourglass round her neck out of her dress and holds it out to Greta. Greta puts it in her mouth for a moment and steps back, leaving the hourglass, that was empty as far as Gerard could see, not entirely full of sand but with a much healthier amount already trickling through.

"_Goodbye_," Gabe says, and Greta pops out of existence, though not in response to Gabe. Gerard supposes everyone's seen people vanish before, even he and Mikey have, but it's still, well, sad. But ghosts always come back in the end and she must be used to it.

The atmosphere is a hell of a lot more cheerful after she's gone and they stay for a while. Mikey asks Gabe what they all do, and Gabe launches into a long story, something about how he saw a cobra once who spoke to him and he wants to find it again and ask it about something. "And in the meantime," he says, "We want to have a good time."

&lt;  


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	2. Chapter 2

  
  
  
  
  


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[Part One](http://cleodoxa.livejournal.com/7417.html#cutid1)

The night doesn't take too long to move on – Gerard remembers nights from his childhood that didn't go until nobody could really believe it had ever been different. The last time box had done some good stuff. They're gladder than usual to get down into the forest and stretch their legs. It's not long before they're faintly surprised to discover an actual small town. Their buildings all look morphed, boxy with neat sharp edges like they started off with a definite attempt to withstand shift, to represent certainty, but in weird pulled geometric shapes. The trees look more sinister from here, a dark enclosing circle.

"What are _you_ looking for?" asks a passer-by as they walk up and down the main street, wondering if they should explore the town or bypass it. Gerard knows it's childish but he feels disappointed by the man's tone, as if looking is quite routine and unrelated to finding anything.

Ray interrupts Gerard's usual do-you-know-how-we-might-find-a-time-box? routine with "I think this is a device district! How weird to see it on the ground." So they have a look round the engineers' shops before they go and then Ray gets caught shoplifting a small (but rare, he tells them later) mechanical item and put in the town jail.

It's all very alarming at first, Ray's stricken face as he's marched off. They run after him and the guards or whatever they are shouting "Hey! Hey! What're you fucking doing?" When they get to the jail things get clearer and more official, and it's hard not to be annoyed with Ray.

"I'm sorry," says Ray, looking hangdog. "I just get so frustrated that I can't try anything out properly. What are they saying? If it's money or a jail term you know, we can't really afford it and it probably wouldn't be that long ..." Gerard doesn't think Ray means this in the sense he won't feel a decided pang if they do deliberately leave him in jail. They'd have to hang around here for the duration or probably lose him for good, anyway – there wouldn't be much hope of them finding their way back here.

"Can't lie, I wish you were a slicker thief. But we'll sort it, don't worry about it. _Yet_," says Frank.

They go and talk to a lawyer. Lawyers are creepy; no one ever heard of anyone going through a lawyering process, they just are, like they came with the world in the same way clothes and trains do. This one, like all the others has a tapering white beard, clothes with a black-green sheen, heaps of papers clutches to his chest and a querulously strict manner. There is indeed a fine – a sum they can't pay – or a jail term.

"How long?" asks Bob.

"I couldn't say at this stage. The details are not yet defined."

They stand about at the front desk, police officers bustling about purposefully making them aware they're in the way.

"We're not leaving him, right?" asks Mikey in sudden alarm.

"No, no," says Gerard. Sometimes he tries not to get too attached to the other guys. People get lost and vanished and Metamorphosed all the time and it's so much better if you can be easy come, easy go and don't have to think what if, what if, how will I feel then? He guesses he learnt that early. He remembers a time when he remembered their parents, but no impression of them is left with him now, not even what happened to them in the end. But he likes being a group, he likes how they're good at different things and teaming up for a purpose makes them all stronger and it feels like they don't all have to be _just_ themselves. So not to put too fine a point on it, he hasn't managed to achieve a placid, indifferent state he can maintain no matter what happens to anyone. And of course he's got attached to Ray.

They're not allowed to see Ray again except to yell through the hole in the cell door that they will get the money for the fine somehow and will be back tomorrow. After that they gloomily mooch off.

"Do we just go back to the ship now?" asks Bob.

"I think we ought to find out more about this place. How we can earn some money," says Frank, so they find a hostel type place to spend the night, though they're aware that this is coming out of their limited funds. It isn't a bad move though because before they even talk to anyone they've gathered that this place is into inventions. Everything is automated, anything that can have feet has feet and walks on them. Their rooms have a curious spinning wheel/treadmill effort in them that makes a frenetic but rhythmic metallic clanking sound with sudden high sweet pure notes; not entirely without interest. Gerard turns the fancy barometer to the wall; he's sure they're no way they can predict the way time is going to go when it hasn't decided itself yet, but it freaks him out. All things considered it's a shame Ray didn't get to see more of the town before he succumbed to technology's more minor temptations.

Talking to the other guests and the staff confirm the focus of this place. They don't have any manufactories so it's not like they could scrape a little cash with unskilled labor. The only industry is in advanced curiosities and putting up strangers like themselves.

"Maybe we should see if anyone wants to buy Ray's plans. I mean, lots of them are supposed to work if he could get the right stuff," says Gerard.

"Or we could always try and sell the air-ship," says Bob. They all twist their mouths, undecided. It's not like they want to part with it, and it's extremely doubtful anyone would want it. "It is rare," he says.

"You're good at drawing," says Mikey to Gerard. "I bet someone would employ you to do plans or something."

*

They go back to the jail when they've had a night's sleep, though it takes forever to get there because time keeps reeling back a couple of minutes. It always takes a couple of times to notice what's happening, because somehow you forget there's probably a reason for that odd sense of familiarity. Then it's like being jerked back on elastic over and over again and Gerard gets so fucking sick of this stretch of road. He can hardly believe it when they actually do make it to the jail; it's like stepping inside a mirage.

They can't see Ray right away; he's conferring with a lawyer. He's smiling when they enter the cell, though. "I've made a deal," he says. "That lawyer asked me if I was any good at inventions by any chance so I told him about a few of my ideas and did some sketches. Then he went away for ages and came back and said I'm sort of out on bail. I'm free if I can invent an automaton that's actually real, like a person." He looks a little less cheerful. "Which, you know, they're only doing it because they think I can't manage it so it's a bonus if I do. But I'll try."

"So it's got to have a personality? And think for itself, with a brain and everything?" says Gerard.

"Yeah. It's a big deal for inventors, people are always trying to make it happen because it'd be a Persistence Cause thing, wouldn't it, if we could make our own people?"

"They're letting you out to work on it?" says Frank. Ray nods. "If it doesn't work out you can run, can't you?"

"I get the idea they're going to be tracking me. But yeah, I'm sure I can sort it out one way or the other." His confidence is a little forced and Gerard hopes Ray is really _really_ good at inventing, but it's better than nothing.

Ray is set up at one of the best master engineers' in town with full access to all the parts and advice, though it highlights the question of how Ray is supposed to do something if he can't.

"I think what I'm going to do first is just to build a lot of robots, doing different things, and see what's _not_ human about them and maybe they'll be human and not human in different ways and I can collate the evidence," says Ray. He's almost rubbing his hands and though Gerard can see it turning into a hopeless task and Ray panicking, he's glad he's having fun.

*

Robots are quite a new thing, though they're spreading; some manufactories are starting to use them instead of workers and some air-ships have them as drivers. They're taking off slower than they would because they don't last long; one Metamorphosis is usually the end of them and Neutralisers and Readjustors don't work on them. Ray's start off pretty standard; Frank says they're like ones he's seen. Gerard earns a few pennies by painting them to look more like people though he can't seem to make them look like _cheerful_ people. Due probably to the uncertain circumstances, he finds it hard to curb his imagination of melodrama and even when he makes a conscious effort not to make them look consumptive they come out brooding. The town soon fills up with them, serving in shops and doing unnecessary work on the roads. Then Ray has to think how to make them more human, and settles on intelligence first. Language is a priority and it's very delicate work fitting that many words inside a metallic brain.

"And I guess it should understand the meaning _behind_ the words," says Ray, enthusiastic but frazzled. They'd all said the most important part was convincing law and order Ray had created a mechanical human, not necessarily creating an actual mechanical human. It's hard not to get into the spirit of the thing, though, and talk as if he's not just after a facsimile.

"Can you make it so that every time it says a word it sets off a reaction related to the word, like a picture or a feeling, so it would understand when it's _been_ using them, at least?" suggests Frank, leaning an elbow on the mantelpiece and rubbing his face against the wall in an instinctive tired-of-the-subject gesture.

"Well, I'm going to have to. But you have to attach wires to the back of every word and it's _so_ fucking fiddly. I think I'll make one with easy words first and get it to understand grammar later."

They all feel a bit useless hanging about the town. Bob seems particularly anxious and keeps going off into the woods with his time bomb, just in case. It helps when they remember that being able to create their own people really would be one in the eye for god and sloping around here might turn out to be just as significant for the Persistence Cause as continuing questing. Gerard cheers up a lot when, as Mikey suggested, he gets a job drawing up plans. It's with Lyn-Z, the toymaker. She makes flying and talking animals and dolls and clockwork puppet theatres. Gerard arrived when she was getting a bit more ambitious with the puppet theatres, programming the puppets with little plays. She'd come up with a way of folding one scene up like tissue paper and putting into a pocket so that a lot more scene changes were possible quicker than with a real play. She wanted Gerard to copy the designs for each prototype, the originals being too much like a first draft to continue working from. He takes an interest in the finished product, they get talking and it isn't long before they're sitting around making up stories and pushing drawings across the table at each other all day.

"You've got a good imagination," says Frank when Gerard's telling him about it. It's more a matter-of-fact tone than a boosting or admiring one, and the remark's rather sudden. "So you like Lyn-Z then?"

"Yeah. I like her a lot."

"That's good," says Frank, holding Gerard's gaze before dropping his eyes.

Frank, Mikey and Bob find work as bar or shop staff. No one's making much money but they haven't lost all hopes of paying Ray's fine if it comes to it. Mikey seems okay but he has a placidity that makes it difficult to tell sometimes. Frank is irritated and moody and feels cooped up. Gerard always thought he was running away from dead-end jobs if he was running away from anything, so it's not surprising. He stomps about and flares up in the middle of conversations and makes jokes that might not be jokes. The one good thing is that Frank kind of enjoys being angry; he gets an "I just said that!" look of startled glee after being obnoxious and he kicks things in an almost cheerful way. If he doesn't engage on a certain level Gerard finds it easy not to let it bother him.

They all get used to things, Ray's work on robot after robot forming a backdrop. Ray thinks he's got the intellectual side down pretty well and starts on emotions. This is difficult. There's no room for anything else in the head so Ray decides to situate the emotions in the heart, nice and symbolic. The problem is he can't even tell what the effect of his work on the heart is because of difficulties connecting it to the brain and making the brain and heart work in tandem. If the brain won't work the thing won't go at all.

"_And_," says Ray when he thinks he's solved that, "I'm not necessarily going to know if it feels or not if it does work. I mean, there's a sad robot but it hasn't got eyes. It's not going to cry and its face isn't that expressive. And the loving robot. It hasn't given me a hug yet but that doesn't mean it's not sitting there loving everything."

"And now we've got to feel bad about the sad robot," said Bob. "This shit is complicated." Gerard felt a momentary jump of horror at the thought of the robots, pitiful and loving forced upon them and not knowing why or how to alleviate their feelings. But is it really any different to creating humans, that inconceivable achievement of responsibility? And that's the whole point of this scheme.

The angry robot, when Ray makes one, is most decidedly angry. It does substantial damage to the workshop only then it morphs into a Murderer with a cloak, its fist clenched round a dagger. Ray and everyone who works there run out into the street. Everyone else, when they see the Murderer, runs indoors and lucks the door; the workshop refugees manage to dash in somewhere just in time.

Gerard and Lyn-Z don't see any sign of the Murderer from the toyshop window. They hear some slammed doors and general kerfuffle and go to look but all they gather is that the street is mysteriously empty. It's unsettling not to know what's happening and Gerard says, "I think I need to check at least Mikey's alright."

They have a scuffle in the doorway about whether he should go alone which is resolved when Gerard says, "You should be here to open the door for me in case I need to run back."

He ventures out into the street, looking all about him. His eye meets nothing but empty street, then he sees something black rounding the corner. It only takes him a moment to ascertain that this is the billow of a Murderer's cloak and then it's bearing down on him, and across the road at the Department of Records they're holding the door open and making frantic gestures at him. The next thing he knows he's on the other side of the door, clutching his heart. Then he has to hang around making casual conversation with the archive workers for a couple of hours hoping everyone else is alright. Gerard never heard of such a place before he came to this town and he's still bemused now. It's almost always pointless trying to keep records of the past, which seems to change when you leave it long enough.

After a couple of hours everyone is almost sure it's safe; Murderers don't linger. Gerard looks in on Mikey, Frank and Bob's workplaces but finds them all at Ray's workshop.

"Is everyone okay?" he asks, though they all look whole and everything. Ray and everyone who works in the workshop is off to one side, holding up plans and shaking their heads. "Hey, what happened in here?" as he sees the splintered doorframe, the crumpled robots, the table almost snapped in the middle and, as Ray turns, Ray's bruised face.

"The angry robot just got angry," says Ray. "I think it was trying to escape. Then just as it got out of the door it turned into a Murderer."

"Inexplicable, obviously," says the engineer to whom the workshop belongs. "But law and order's still going to be in here asking _why_." He doesn't seem to wish Ray ill, or think he's up to something, but there's a definite air of lugubrious anticipation in the room.

Ray manages to get away and they all go back to the air-ship.

"It is weird," Frank says. "I never heard of something turning _into_ a Murderer." Murderers are like ghosts, but worse.

"Either it just _happened_," says Ray, "Which, you know, things do. Or it's something to do with it being a robot. Maybe that's what happens when robots start to feel, all they can be is unquiet, wicked spirits." There's a pause. "It's starting to get, I don't know, sticky, the further I get with this robot stuff."

Gerard has also increasingly been feeling like it would be better to leave all this alone.

"It's starting to get old, staying here," says Frank.

Gerard goes back to finish up work with Lyn-Z. He takes a little walk in the woods on his way back to the ship, just a dabble in the edge of the forest. Then he sees the white glimmer of a unicorn through the trees, darting off as it notices him before he notices it. Gerard has to run after it though he realises as he does that going off on your own like this is how is how people get lost and never heard of again. He feels something roll under his foot and in the time it takes to look down and see a bottle on the ground the unicorn is out of sight when he looks up. Looking down at the bottle again he sees it has a piece of paper in it.

TIME WILL TELL. POSSIBLY.

Well. It's not what Gerard hoped for when he drew the paper out, no clue for a treasure hunt. It's more a smug, trite leading on than a deep oracular pronouncement, whichever way you look at it.

"But at least it's like something or someone has noticed me," says Gerard breathlessly, waving the paper at the others back at the air-ship.

"I think it's a sign we should leave," says Ray. He rummages in a bag. "I managed to get hold of these." He holds up what looks like a pair of shears with a faint blue light about them. "If everyone's agreed I'm gonna try cutting my cuff."

"Wait," says Bob. He thumps down on the bench next to the steering wheel. "We should take off as soon as you do it, they can probably tell."

The two halves of the metal cuff go pinging across the ship as it shudders into the air. Gerard clutches the piece of paper and smiles. Time will tell _something_ in the end. Then he feels a twinge. "I wish I'd said goodbye to Lyn-Z," he says.

Frank, who has his head stuck out the window, turns round. "You can always try and send her a letter."

*

Their decision to leave seems justified when, cruising along, the forest far beneath them, Mikey lets out a yell. "Something just happened," he says when they rush over. He points vaguely. "A whole lot of trees – the space just went black and blinked out. That could be an angel, couldn't it?"

They all stare out of the window. Gerard can hear his breath in the silence as he leans over Mikey's shoulder. The anticipation fades to boredom and Ray says, "I don't know – oh wow it's like it's being _eaten_." A whole section of the forest - and more to the point, a whole section of time – just goes.

"Mikey," says Bob, and Mikey slides off the control bench to let Bob sit down. The ship accelerates as fast as it can get. Gerard's hanging out of the window, scanning the forest for any sign of disturbance. He's excited to be on to something, but then comes a sudden awareness of danger that shouldn't come as a shock, a waiting vibrating through his body. They're heading straight for the threat, there could be waves of disappearance emanating from the wiped out areas.

"Is that—" says Ray and Gerard is at the window on the other side as something zooms past. He looks down for a moment; Frank's clasping his hand, fingers warm and firm on his palm.

"Out of our league," says Frank, and Gerard's looking at the exhaust left by the other air-ship as it outstrips them by miles. It's a heavy duty, powerful looking thing. Bob half rises in exasperation but sits down again, his hands alternately on the steering wheel or in frustrated frozen motion over the control panel, where the faster, faster button he wants isn't. Gerard can see something happening at the bottom of the other ship as it approaches what would have been the border between the forest that is there and the forest that now isn't; a hatch is opening and a couple of people slide out attached to parachutes. He fixes his eye on them, waiting for them to vanish.

"Up, up," yells Bob in his anxiety to be where he wants to be, though of course he is in charge of the controls and is hitting up as he speaks. It's like a comet, a streak of fire instead of ice, shooting up from the forest, past the parachutists who punch the air in rage, rising almost level with their ship for a few moments so Gerard can discern a tall, human-like figure inside the enveloping flame. Frank lets go of his hand and scrambles out of the window. Gerard can hear him scrabbling onto the roof even while the bright figure gets smaller and smaller until it could be a gold balloon or something, or a dot, and is swallowed up altogether. Bob takes his hands off the control panel and lets out a heavy sigh.

"At least they didn't get it," says Gerard. It's hard not to feel resentment for the more competent would-be angel capturers, with their fancy air-ship and parachutes. The other ship is now lowering itself down to go and fetch the parachutists.

"Well, now we'll go the other way, _avoiding_ the danger zone," says Bob, putting his hand back on the steering wheel.

"Frank!" Gerard calls out of the window. "You can see it's gone, come back in."

Frank jumps down from the window and lands on his hands and knees, grinning. "If we get rich the first thing we should do is upgrade," he says. "Still, it's something to see one. And it must have been running scared of us – well, and them – or it would have smote us on the way."

Gerard is glad to have seen an angel at such close quarters, and even gladder to have come to no harm, but now he's all excited and nothing's happening anymore. He slumps down in the corner and tries to make his body feel tired in reaction to the adrenaline. He wishes he could jerk off. Frank sits down next to him, crossing his arms on his knees and leaning his chin on them. He's humming, seeming surprisingly cheerful – Gerard might have expected him to feel more impatient. Gerard finds himself looking at Frank's face too closely when Frank has his eyelashes lowered and has to look away quickly when he looks up.

"In a bit we'll go down to the forest again," says Frank. "And we'll find something." Gerard wants to say he doesn't need to be promised things, like he needs to be kept from losing heart, like he's doing this for himself in ways he isn't, but he feels that might be patronising. And he does want that feeling he had when he saw the angel, like everything he ever had in his head is really real and possible.

*

Gerard wakes up when he hears the word "time storm."

"No," says Frank. "It's just me. I've always been prone to Metamorphosis and sometimes I get it when no one else does."

"What's wrong?" says Gerard, sitting up.

"My ribcage isn't itself today," says Frank. His torso seems to have gone missing, replaced with an actual cage, quite a twirly one, in which three little birds twitter and hop about. "I'm wondering if there's three of them to represent my lungs and heart. That's about all you have in your chest, isn't it?" He already has a Readjustor round his wrist and Mikey's handing him a Neutraliser. "I'll go up on the roof; they work better in fresh air."

Gerard follows him. He likes sitting on the roof because though it's terrifying getting up and down it feels surprisingly secure when you're up there. He likes watching the wings' slow rise and fall, like he's on the back of some great animal. It's a weird disconnect, looking at Frank, because from the shoulders up and the waist down he looks so normal. Frank carefully places his feet on the ridge at the bottom of the roof so that his head rests just before the peak. He hangs the Neutraliser round his neck so that it clangs once against the metal ribs and the birds jump around extra fast, puts his arms behind his head and closes his eyes. It's not a particularly nice day; the sky's white with cloud and there's a breeze in the air. Gerard knows Frank can't feel anything at all in the rib area, but it seems like he ought to feel cold, the metal chill.

*

They climb up and straddle the peak. Gerard crosses his legs on top of it and balances quite well; if he looks at the blankness on either side of his knees it's like he's balancing on nothing. But it's too easy to topple if the ship shakes at all and he puts a leg down to grip the side of the roof. Frank puts the Neutraliser in his lap, gently humming, and removes it with a slightly awkward look a moment later. He looks down at his birdcage and cautiously touches the metal.

"Can you feel anything?" asks Gerard.

Frank waggles his finger through the bars. "No. Oh!" A bird perches on his finger for a moment.

Feeling a little odd, Gerard leans over and says "Tch tch," to Frank's birds. One comes to sit on his finger when he pushes it through, too. They're tiny, so constantly on the move that Gerard peers at their beady-eyed faces whenever they're still because it's hard to believe such detail can emerge out of the flurry. Frank laughs so that it catches a little, as if something tickles.

"This would feel so weird if I _could_ feel it," Frank says. Gerard withdraws, feeling perhaps he was intruding on his personal space, and smiles at him before clasping his fingers and looking away.

*

Frank pulls himself up to the peak then stands on it. He's showing off, trying to get Gerard to tell him to be careful so he sits himself down and says nothing instead. "Ha! Ha! Ha!" says Frank, pushing the sound out on his breath deliberately. "When you think about it, I'm breathing and talking out of nothing."

Gerard didn't think of that and he looks at the birdcage with redoubled alarm. He frowns at the little blue and brown birds. "Didn't we come up here before? I'm sure I remember you sitting down looking at me." Frank screws his face up, hesitates and shakes his head. "Maybe it's because the birds are breathing. Presumably."

"Wonder what would happen if I took one out," says Frank.

"Yeah, better not," says Gerard and pats the roof next to him. They both look straight ahead; Metamorphosis never seems to come undone when you're looking at it – or happen in the first place, come to that.

"You look," says Frank after a while.

At first Gerard thinks nothing's changed but then he sees that the bars are white. "They're getting more bone-like!" It's a bit more unsettling when the space between the bars begins to be covered. From the inside it looks like skin but when Gerard (very gingerly) prods it from the outside it feel like solid flesh. "I'm a bit worried about the birds," he says. They don't seem to be changing into anything."

"Maybe they're in there all time," says Frank, but they fly out when there's only a few gaps left. Frank cups his hands and tries to catch one as it flies away but they're all too quick as they scatter in three directions and soon disappear from sight.

"So now you're all there," says Gerard, feeling almost as if it's some kind of shared achievement.

*

Everyone's awake and Frank has his shirt on and everything, so they choose a place to land that looks like a small clearing. When they get nearer it becomes apparent that there's another air-ship already there, and loud voices can be heard.

"Want to go somewhere else?" asks Ray, but they're already close enough it'll be awkward getting up through the tree tops without more momentum, and maybe it won't hurt to see what's happening.

They wish they hadn't when a lawyer hops out of the ship and says "Ah! We can always do with more witnesses, come along."

"What for?" Gerard asks suspiciously.

"A tea party. Come in, come in."

The words tea party only makes Gerard think, Who eats? Who drinks? Until he gets inside the air-ship and finds a group of guys sitting at a table looking oddly prim, with lots of documents scattered before them. "You're having a tea party to solve an argument?" he asks to confirm.

"Yes, have you come to help settle it?" says a guy with long brown hair, tucking it behind his ear as he speaks.

Gerard isn't sure about that but the lawyer says, "Yes indeed," and pulls out chairs for all of them. A tea party is an old fashioned legal procedure developed as a highly passive aggressive way of solving arguments. Someone who had a bone to pick would invite the source of their annoyance to a tea party as the flimsiest of excuses and politely haul them over the coals while dropping pretend lumps of sugar into pretend cups of tea and slicing pretend cake to distract them. Gerard supposes there must at some point have been a fashion for pretend tea parties in all sincerity. The concept became ritualized so that the imaginary refreshments became documents and items of law.

The lawyer formally introduces the members of the tea party and says, "These gentlemen are on a search for the phoenix, the bird which never dies without being reborn and exists throughout all time. Finding this bird would prove that time is not technically ended, not to mention that it is no doubt very wise. Now, there is a movement to expel one of these gentlemen from the hunting party, one Mr. Conrad. As I understand it, you have refused to pass the cream jug, is that correct?"

Mr. Conrad has his arms crossed and looks more than a little sullen. "It's not in my _power_ to pass the cream jug, they can pass it if they like, I can't stop them," he says.

"Are you in fact _protesting_ the cream jug? In that case may I venture to suggest it would be in your interest to take up the sugar tongs?"

Mr. Conrad shrugs. "Not much point taking up anything when people are trying to pass me the cream jug," he says.

"But you see, he as good as promised about the cream jug earlier," says William, exasperated. "I just think it would be better for everyone."

It's not as dull as Gerard had feared it would be. It's hard not to look back and forth at each speaker and try to decode the argument, though he and the others can do nothing more than stare in alarm when appealed to for back-up. Finally they seem to agree that Mr. Conrad will drink tea without cream or sugar and leave the table and the others, as a token gesture, will eat their cake and not have it. Mr. Conrad does not look happy by any stretch of the imagination but he doesn't protest the motion, to which they all have to say aye to, and sign a cup of tea each.

Then the lawyer says, "I'll just examine your air-ship license, if I may."

"We don't – do we?" says Gerard.

Ray splutters, temporarily unable to voice his startled indignation. "You don't need a _license_."

"You do now," says the lawyer. "I'll need to inspect this vehicle. Can you tell me about the circumstances in which you obtained it?"

"We found it up a tree," several of them say at once.

"Did the tree seem sentient in any way? Because otherwise I'm afraid it did not have the legal power to give you the air-ship, in which case it belongs to no one." Gerard opens his mouth to argue and the lawyer carries on, "And if it belongs to no one then no one can sell or give it, and no one can possess something they didn't buy that wasn't a gift."

They're in the doorway of the phoenix hunters' air-ship and with that the lawyer sets off across the grass to their creaky old flying house, draws a piece of cardboard out of his coat and writes OUT OF ORDER on it before propping it up in the window.

"Fucking – well I guess that's that," says Frank, glaring at the lawyer. The law is as unruly as time; whatever's happening right now is happening and there's not much you can do about it.

They go and get their things out of the ship and stand about in front of it, looking from one direction to another, deliberately lost.

"Sorry about that," says William, lounging in his doorway. "Awful, aren't they? You don't really need a ship though, hardly anyone round here does. And you're looking for something too, aren't you? There's lots of people like that roaming about, some of them keep a look out for other people's stuff as well which is a help. And the more searches you know about, the more it seems like things get found."

They set off into the forest. They're not used to carrying their baggage rather than leaving it in the ship and altogether they're more sullen than they imagined they would be on getting back on the trail. There are more people in the forest than they're used to and a group of people holding a big treasure chest between practically canters across their path in glee. The sight of other people finding things does have an enlivening effect and after Mikey and Gerard wander into the remains of some old conversation and talk in a language none of them understands for ten minutes, Ray has an idea.

"We've probably got enough money for me to make some of those inventions to help finding things I was working on before," he says. There are ships in the sky but none of them have a ladder down so they stand about yelling up at them until someone lets one down. They're all personal air-ships, no shops or workshops here so they have to pay someone to give them a lift even though there's a ship with a promising looking sign just within sight.

"Before I get all excited let's see how much money there is," says Ray, and they have to take their bags off their backs and dump them all on the shop floor. None of them have put their money all neatly in one place so they have to rummage through their clothes and baggage unearthing little heaps of coins as they go. It looks like a surprising lot piled up on the floor and the shopkeeper casts an amorous gaze over it before looking away.

"I'll start small," says Ray.

*

There's a bit of a conflict of interests when Ray gets to work; it's hard for him to tear himself away from putting things together, taking them apart and putting them back different and the others are wary of going off by themselves in case they become separated. They risk a short inspection of the immediate vicinity once they've got bored of annoying Ray with questions.

There's a crashing sound, not a disastrous crash but the sound of something colliding firmly with something else. They follow the path round a corner and find two skinny people trying ineffectually to push a printing press back onto a trolley with a large platform. Gerard, Mikey and Frank look at Bob who rolls his eyes and goes forward to help. There's a small boy sitting on the other side of the trolley and the young man makes haste to say, "He's not ours. He used to be a grown-up and we're not even really friends anymore. But then he got younger so we're kind of stuck with him. So if you come across a guy called Spencer could you tell him Ryan and Z have Brendon and they're ready for Spencer to come collect him any time?"

Brendon turns his bottom lip inside out. "You _like_ Spencer," Ryan tells him crossly.

Z whips out a notebook. "So what are you looking for?"

"A time box," says Gerard.

"Ah, so we can't offer you finders-not-keepers on that one. It's not the kind of thing you do something with yourselves, is it, it effects everyone. But here's a list of things and people that people are trying to find, so if you come across any of them do try and put word out."

"Would you like a newsletter?" says Ryan.

"Oh, I always wondered where they came from," says Gerard, looking at the printing press again.

*

They're never sure if Ray's Attractor of Significant Circumstances actually works. After all, things usually manage to happen by themselves. But the walking clocks do swarm the day he finishes it. They're all just sitting around when they hear a voice say "Tick tock, tick tock." Gerard freezes and looks around, fearing that it's an angel taunting them, come down to announce that time is at last finally and irrefutably over.

"Tick tock, tick tock," say other voices all at once. It's Mikey who sees the first clock up a tree and grabs Gerard's arm and points. It's in the act of scrambling down, grasping the bark of the tree with clawed feet. Gerard can see it has a mouth, a triangular opening showing paler wood, that opens and closes with the words. The trees ahead rustle and now Gerard can see more clocks the more he looks, wood and metal and stone, all shapes and sizes – there's a grandfather clock being carried down the tree by smaller clocks. A clock lands on his back; he yells but can't bring himself to touch it to try and pull it off. It grasps at his clothes, nearly painfully firm, as it climbs down him. They're landing on the others too, just marching over them as if they were inanimate.

Frank rummages in their bags and finds a parasol. He puts it up and punches upwards when clocks land on it so they fly off, one of them hitting Bob in the chin.

"I heard once all the air-ships in one part of the sky came alive," says Bob. "But never anything about clocks. Where did they _come_ from?"

"Maybe they escaped from a time mine chamber," says Gerard. The time mine is where a lot of vanished things and people go. If you really want them back you go to look there, via a room or air-ship filled with clocks. The presence of so many clocks all showing different times that don't exist does something strange. "Or more than one," he adds. He's never seen a time mine chamber but there are legions of clocks here; the forest floor looks like it's moving.

"Does it mean something? Should we be worried?" asks Mikey.

No one answers because they don't know. "If it wasn't clocks you'd just think well _that's_ annoying and wait for them to go away," says Gerard.

"I wish they weren't going tick tock," says Frank.

When the horde of clocks coming out of the trees starts to thin they follow them through the forest at a distance. They come across a few people on the way, either running in horror, up to their shins in clocks or up trees. They see Ryan trying to climb a tree and give him a leg up to where Z and Brendon sit, Z trying to stop Brendon from yelling "Tick tock tick tock!"

The clocks have got a little way ahead of them; they aren't trying to eat anything, nothing's disappeared and time's been running smoothly so Gerard is about to agree with Ray when he says, "Maybe we should just leave them to it." Then they hear the tick tock sound, which had been fading, thicken behind them. There's a rustling and the head of the clock army appears, having apparently looped its way round the trees to follow them. They walk backwards staring at the oncoming clocks; it's alarming to see all those faces, no features except the mouth unless you counted the numbers and the twitching hands, but not blank enough when you were wondering what was happening behind them. Then they run, trying to make for the tail of the army so they are once again following them.

This happens at least a dozen times, the people stuck in trees able to do nothing more than watch them race round yet again. In the end the clocks try to change direction to catch them out but that confuses them and they start attacking each other. Finally safe from being followed they go back to their camp for a rest. After a while they start to wonder if they did it wrong.

"Perhaps they were trying to tell us something. They could obviously talk; maybe they'd have said something other than tick tock if we asked them a question. Or we could have seen what would happen if we let them catch up when they were following," says Gerard.

"Let's go back and see what they're doing," says Mikey. There are only a few clocks left when they find them again, mostly hopping about in the trees, and a lot of clock parts lying around, though not as many as would account for all the clocks there had been.

"I think they've eaten each other," says Frank, which makes them feel glad they did get away. There's not much they could have done if the clocks had tried to eat _them_.

*

"Aaargh!" says Frank as they're battling through the forest and he slips down an unexpected slope. Gerard leans over and tries to see him though the greenery, unwilling to venture forwards. "Hey," comes Frank's voice. "There's a cave at the bottom of this slope, we should go look in it."

"Are you sure you're Frank?" asks Bob, because you shouldn't really let anyone tempt you off your path.

"Yeah yeah."

Leaves get up in Gerard's face when he's inching his ass down the slope; the only clear place is right at the bottom where Frank is waiting at the mouth of a cave. Ray gets out a lantern and they venture in. The lantern immediately lights up a small chamber.

"Oh, is that all?" says Frank, but there's a shadowy corner and when Ray swings the lantern closer it's revealed to be a passage. It's very narrow and in some places Gerard can feel it brushing both his shoulders. It has steps leading down which makes Gerard wonder, as he hasn't before, about what lies underneath the forest floor. What would happen if you dug and dug?

They're in the cave at the bottom of the steps before he realises it and just as he does there's a group of people stepping out of the shadows. It honestly takes him a couple of moments to realise why they're familiar. They're them – a double for each one of them.

"Who are you?" asks Bob.

"I'm you," says Bob's double. "Except, only one of us can really be you. We'll have to fight for it." His hand goes to his hip, and the other doubles follow suit and draw out swords. They go to the other hip and draw out a second sword. The five doubles stand in a row, each holding one sword out so that light catches the blade, serious faces and raised eyebrows.

Gerard's double pushes a sword at him; he doesn't want to take it but he has to unless he wants it to fall on his foot. "Only one of us can go back up into the air," he says, deliberately looking Gerard right in the eye. "If you want it to be you have to win a duel against me. But it's not terrible if I win, you know, I really am you."

His double steps back and puts up his sword. Gerard just looks at him but then the sword darts at him so he has to force it back. This is not the place he'd have chosen to have a sword fight; he can't even really see his blade or the double's except as gleams of white where they catch the light. He keeps his eyes fixed on the gleams, so fixed it makes them blur. He hears the sound of swords clashing all over the cave and he wishes he could see what's happening but all he can do is try and bat the gleam as far away from him as he can. Finally his sword sort of slides on the other's and the gleam spreads down the blade as he thrusts it out at arms' length and it comes to a sudden halt because it's stuck in his double's chest.

"Oh," says the double, and that's his own face looking sad and surprised. It's odd to see himself looking pitiful, to feel that flicker of compassion at his own face – it's not the sort of face he makes in the mirror. Gerard looks at the other's chest; he sees red begin to spread across his shirt and then he's falling backwards. He's vanished before he hits the floor.

Gerard looks around. There's only one double left and Frank's just got him. Then it's just them, and Gerard feels the back of his neck prickle when he realises he has no way of telling whether they're the people he came in with or not. That's the point of doubles, you can't tell the difference. By the way they're staring around quietly, the others are thinking the same thing.

"I'm pretty sure we're all the right ones," says Mikey. "I'm me, I promise." His tone is trying to reassure and, really, to seek reassurance himself, not to persuade, and Gerard pats his cheek.

"So we're agreed that we're us?" asks Ray, and Gerard knows the agreeing is more important than actually knowing. Because they can't know, and they can't feel that sinister creep of doubt either.

"Was that table there?" asks Frank. Gerard turns and sees a table with boxes on it. There's a note. _You can open one box and only one. Choose wisely._

Gerard fingers the boxes. One is made of gold, one silver, and one lead.

"Well, we're not stupid," says Frank. "It's the lead one, right?" Because you'd go for the gold or silver if you were greedy or thinking obviously.

"All agreed on the lead?" asks Gerard. His breath comes fast, his fingers almost itching where they rest on the lead box's lid. They all nod and he opens the box. It's empty and nothing happens. He's heard time boxes have a kind of cube of light in them and although he's open to possibilities he's pretty sure this box isn't it.

"So not the lead box then," says Frank. "It must be a reverse psychology thing. I guess we shouldn't try another?"

Gerard toys with the catch of the silver box. Perhaps after all that is the least obvious and therefore the right one. "No," he says, taking his hand away before the urge overtakes him. "Best not."

[Part Three](http://cleodoxa.livejournal.com/7796.html)   


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**The Fleeting 2/3**   
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	3. The Fleeting 3/3

  
  
  
  
  


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[Part Two](http://cleodoxa.livejournal.com/7525.html#cutid1)

They don't find a time box but they do find some things on the list Z gave them. "More than most people do," says Z. "So you're kind of lucky."

"This just turned up in my bag," says Bob, brandishing the golden grail cup. "It's not like we're even trying."

"How's that woman doing with the cursed necklace?" asks Gerard. He's curious as to why you'd want to search for a cursed necklace.

"She's played five ghoul games since she found it, her hourglass keeps running out of sand. Her feet have turned into glass and keep turning back however long she leaves the kit on. She says her heart hurts. She still seems kind of pleased about it all though. I don't know, people are weird."

They wait around a while for the grail people to turn up, curious to see what this does. A man and woman hurry up to Z and Ryan's trolley – they have a pole attached to it with a red handkerchief at the top to make it easier to find them. With shaking hands they pour water from a bottle into the cup and drink from it without even offering a greeting. They seem to fill with light, starting at the throat. Their bodies become luminous and faintly gold, almost transparent like fine china. Then Gerard realises they really are becoming transparent. Z puts out her hand and almost touches one of them as their bodies become like tissue paper held up to the light. They are just barely discernible and then they are gone.

"Catch me looking for a grail," says Gerard. "What's the point of something that _destroys_ you?" It is surprisingly disturbing seeing them disappear. He's seen people vanish but here there's the suggestion that vanishing is some kind of pinnacle, that the best thing of all is not existing.

"Is it like a fashion to look for stuff?" he asks Z. "Like what you're looking for might not even be a good thing but you want to be searching? I'm sure there's been more and more about it in the newsletter."

"I think it's something that came out of the last box," says Z.

*

Gerard starts helping Ryan with the newsletter. It's quite fun going around asking people what they've been up to, and for any stories they've heard from further abroad. They go up to the air-ships as well as relying on people from the forest.

"There's more people in air-ships of course, so you have to try to get as much on them as possible," Ryan says in a grudging sort of way.

Gerard can't tell whether Ryan and Z are together and eventually asks.

"Oh. Well, we're married. My sand was running out and I played a couple of ghoul games and it didn't seem like I was much good at them so Z wanted to do it for me. Only then a lawyer popped up and said you could only play a ghoul game on someone's behalf if you were related or married to them. So she married me."

Gerard does ask whether they're _together_ because it's still not clear but Ryan doesn't seem entirely sure himself.

Gerard wonders if he's getting too settled down, with a kind of job and everything, but this area does seem particularly fertile so he figures he needn't feel bad about sticking around for a little while.

*

One day Gerard and Frank are out gathering sticks for a fire when a hole, dark grey like thick smoke, opens up in the air. Gerard no sooner sees it than he's being thrown on his back by the force of the wind sucked up by the opening. Hail begins to fall. Frank wraps an arm firmly round a tree but he's stretching out his other arm to try and grab Gerard. Gerard kicks and thrashes as he realises he's being sucked towards the opening but he can't get on his feet or find anything to hold on to.

"Don't," he tells Frank, who looks as if he's about to let go of his tree to try and hold Gerard down. But the tree is bending toward the hole so at least Gerard isn't entirely certain that Frank lets go on purpose. He lunges for Frank's hand as he feels the suction grab his hair and they're both sucked into the portal. They find themselves lying on their stomachs in what looks like a street, a real one, on the ground instead of in the air. All around them are broken buildings, many of them nothing but piles of rubble. Gerard is almost reluctant to look around him; he's pretty sure there's nothing he wants to see.

He stands up though, and the first place he looks is up. "I think it's the end of the world," he says, instinctively holding his hands to the sides of his head. There's an almost constant noise that seems to be coming from the sky, like gunshots or thunder but louder than either and not quite the same. The sky's split, not with lightening but what looks like an actual rip. It's dark and filled with smoke so Gerard can't see what's beyond it. He thinks he sees dark figures passing back and forth but it's probably just the smoke.

"Are there even any people?" he asks.

"I saw someone run past the end of the street," says Frank. They stand about hopelessly looking perplexed. There's a scream from somewhere and then everything collapses. The buildings, and the chunks of buildings, quiver and dwindle to dust. The sky heaves and falls down, or in on itself. Gerard sees it sag, the darkness dipping down to the ground. It blocks off one end of the street and a crack spreads down the concrete. Gerard and Frank reach for each others' hands and jump over the crack as it widens. There's a sound behind them and Frank looks round. "It's water," he gasps. They run, feeling the water lap at their heels.

"Fire!" shouts Gerard, because suddenly a wall of flame is rolling towards them. They dart to the side and there's a sound like a trumpet over the general banging and roaring and "The world is over. I repeat, the world is over." An avalanche of earth rises up and topples forward. They stop and look from the earth to the fire, both swiftly approaching. The ground rises up and Gerard passes through it, his mind suddenly dark and quiet.

He hears a rustling and opens his eyes. He's lying on the forest floor and Frank's just stood up, cursing and brushing off his clothes. "Oh. Oh. It was just a blip then?" says Gerard, disorientated. He looks around. "Has that hole gone? It's so weird to know that's here like underneath all this." He stares at all the green around him, imagining that chaos just beyond it, like the forest is a disguise that can be peeled away. Despite everything he's never felt so mistrustful of the stability of his surroundings, almost betrayed to think how shallow the reality of what he sees is, though he feels foolish not to be okay with that by now.

"I keep expecting something to get us," says Frank. He puts a hand to his chest and smiles, a little self mocking. "My heart's going like crazy."

"I guess that kind of thing happens all the time really, it's just that that was, you know, the end of the world. In a way it's something to have actually seen it," says Gerard, partly trying to persuade himself out of his shock, partly beginning to feel interested that he actually saw part of the end of the world. It makes him feel better to remember that where they are now is, as much as anything has an order, what happened next. Whoever was announcing the end of the world was premature; people ignored them and carried on. It makes him feel renewed investment and pride in the Persistence Cause.

*

Gerard and Frank come down with time poisoning and while Gerard can't know for sure, it's hard not to associate it with their little trip to see the apocalypse. They're put in the same tent, partly because it's not clear whether or not it's contagious and partly in the vain hope that the tent might contain some of the wasted time they're exuding. They sleep fitfully almost all day, undergoing all the miseries of fever; pounding headaches, sweating hot and cold, dry mouths, repetitive, disturbing dreams. Gerard wakes up and looks over at Frank every so often and vaguely remembers what's real where he is, but then his eyes close again like there's something weighing his eyelids down and he's picking up the dream where it trailed off; him and Frank climbing mountains up to the sky, which is on fire, though they're dreading getting there and one or the other of them keeps falling so the other has to go and get them and pull them back up.

A sapling has sprung up outside their tent, fed by the time they're sweating out.

"Our time's been running really smoothly," says Ray, crouching at the tent's opening. "I feel kind of bad."

"No point in that," says Gerard politely, though of course he does _mind_ that most of his time is being wasted. Mikey keeps trying to look at his hourglass but Gerard says he doesn't want to see it until he's better. There's not much point in doing anything about it before then anyway and he doesn't really want to see his hourglass almost empty at any point. It's almost certain he'll have to play a ghoul game in the near future and he prefers thinking of that as something that happens to other people. It's very "this is _the_ day" like a birthday or something and while he's a little drawn to having one of his own under his belt (in a way he envies Ryan, who had dozens before Z took on the job) he's convinced he'll lose.

When Frank and Gerard are alone and almost well Frank sits up and taps Gerard's shoulder. "Want to have a quick look at our hourglasses?" he says.

Gerard puts a hand to his hourglass and hesitates. "I guess we have to. I don't want to leave it too late to save myself. But if I have to leap out of bed and go find a ghost right away I'm gonna be pissed." He looks at Frank, who seems to be drawing deep breaths. "On the count of three?"

"Huh," says Frank. "It could be worse."

"Yeah, I was expecting like three grains or something. We can leave it a while, then."

*

Gerard and Frank carry on sleeping in the same tent even after they get better. Somewhere along the line things get so Gerard's pleased, almost excited about this unremarkable circumstance. While they're convalescing Gerard finds it hard to go to sleep, feeling achy and irritated and worried. He tries focusing on his breath, making it slow and regular, but it makes him yawn and not in the tired way, so he tries listening to the rhythm of Frank's breath instead. He finds himself liking to think of Frank's chest rising and falling, and leaning on his elbow to see his face half hidden by the blanket, sometimes screwed up as if in concentration and sometimes peaceful. He wants to be lying behind Frank, an arm clamped round him, feeling his warmth all along his front. This is a slightly odd turn for his thoughts to take, but he notices it more when they're up and about. He looks at Frank and thinks about touching him, just little touches in his imagination as they would be cautious and darting in real life; patting the back of his neck or his knee or something. Then he thinks about Frank looking at him mocking and fond, like he really knows him, as he does sometimes, and finds himself thinking about pushing him down, sitting astride him and kissing him. The Frank in his mind's eye opens his mouth and rolls his hips against Gerard's thighs.

Imagination isn't really good enough. Gerard finds himself looking at Frank too much, wanting, in a fairly egotistical way, to know what he is like in Frank's head, what he sees when he looks at Gerard. He wants some input from Frank. He does think about, you know, getting some input. Sometimes Gerard thinks Frank seems to have a particular fondness for him, maybe even touch him often enough for no particular reason. But if Frank was interested in him in that way, Gerard would have thought he'd do something about it. He doesn't often hide his thoughts. Sometimes he tries to persuade himself into overtly proclaiming interest and sometimes he tries to persuade himself out of it, and each time there's the question why he would assume, if Frank hasn't tried to get Gerard himself, Frank would want him if Gerard tried to ... proposition him. He ends up putting the idea on indefinite hiatus, until he just can't withstand the urge to proclaim himself or Frank sends out some signals or something.

*

One day Gerard hears a curious sound, like a tape measure snapping as it's reeled backwards and forwards. Not long after Ryan drops by.

"Someone's found a time box!" he says. "We should be out finding things to write about it."

Gerard is oddly shocked. Of course a new time box is an excellent thing whether it's his own discovery or not, so he tries to feel a little more humble, rather than indignant that someone got there first, stolen a march under his nose. He doesn't think he'd want to take the credit for this particular time box, though. The day has taken on a grey but humid cast and he wonders if he's imagining a pressing, threatening atmosphere that is not just in the air.

Everyone's happy at first; a new time box always cheers people up. But it's not long before Gerard, on his rounds finding stuff for the newsletter, picks up rumors of an unwelcome development in political thought.

"They came round here and lectured me, tried to get me to sign up to whatever it is," one woman tells Gerard. "Said we should just submit to the will of god and let time and the world end, and didn't I have to admit that really I'm just a wanted criminal on the run. They're trying to make people give up the Persistence Cause; they're getting about more and more."

"I don't know, I think it sounds quite exciting to be a wanted criminal on the run," says Gerard and the woman laughs and says that's what she told them.

Soon Gerard comes across people who tell him this stuff face to face. It feels almost taboo; however apathetic people are about doing anything really active, the Persistence Cause is taken for granted by everyone Gerard's ever met. He was taught about it in school and everything. They've organised themselves and have a name, Requiescat, and when someone comes to their camp and asks if they'd like to put their names down Gerard sees they have a long list of names already.

"What do you hope to get out of this?" Frank asks, scowling at the list over the man's shoulder.

The man flaps his arm for a moment, trying to work up an answer. "Righteousness," is what he comes up with in the end.

"No thank you," says Gerard. He gives them the dirtiest look as he leaves.

It's not long before Requiescat moves on to actively working against the other side – defacing Persistence Cause posters, brainwashing people to join them with scare tactics. There are rumors of battles in other parts; at least one air-ship to air-ship scuffle, apparently, which sent debris flying wide. Air-ships cost money, which is probably why there's no tell of more incidents like that. Requiescat decide the people in the forest are the most dangerous, and dispatching as many of them as possible would be a good start to their goal of letting eternal peace reign over earth. All of this is snatched gossip heard from people who heard it second or third-hand. Now that the newsletter is actually needed for something other than making connections where there are none, Gerard and Ryan hardly dare go up to the sky and don't relish it when they do. Everything is alarming and uncertain.

"Maybe we should move on," says Ray.

"But we never hear of any places being any better. They're all worse, if anything," says Mikey.

Gerard looks around at all their faces, grim and, although they probably wouldn't like to admit it, afraid.

"If they really wanted everyone to be dead, why don't they make a start on themselves and break their hourglasses?" he asks.

"Oh, they serve their cause better by staying alive, you see," says Frank with mock earnestness. "But they're useless! Why don't they just kill everyone instead of trying to win a war or whatever it is they think they're doing – they're obviously crap at it."

"Yeah, don't tempt fate," says Bob.

They'd all like to think Requiescat is crap, of course, but they feel very endangered when a couple of times they realize they're being followed. On the other hand they do manage to lose them. They think. Of course, they may just be playing a long game. And then there's the time they wake up and find an arrow embedded in one of their tents. Some people they know, or at least know of, are killed, though with a few of them there's the possibility they've just vanished. Gerard wonders if that's any better. They don't see much of other people now. Everyone is doing a great deal more sitting about nervously in camouflaged tents. Everything and everyone is heaped with grass, leaves and earth to make it less visible.

*

Gerard and Frank are out having a half-hearted look for their usual. They don't often go out and search as a whole group now; it seems like it would attract too much attention. They still look though. A time box ushering in a whole new era seems more desirable than ever in the wake of the unpleasant tidings brought by the last. Most people on quests behave likewise – more cautious but not giving up altogether. They have the time bomb with them, just in case they come across an angel, but also as a weapon if they're set upon. That would be a last-ditch measure to defend themselves though; after lugging the bomb all this time they all feel a kind of alarm at the thought of being left without it even after using it for its designated purpose.

Gerard did go through a time of doubt whether they should still be bothering. It's not like there's anything else to do, but somehow the optimism needed to make the effort, put themselves at risk and make themselves feel afraid on the off chance there's something to be gained from it seemed like too much to ask. Everyone's spirits seem depressed; it's as if the time box let out a heavy, smothering atmosphere that lies on top of everybody so that they're barely conscious of it but feel it all the same.

He asked Frank, "Do you really think we need to keep looking?" He didn't know why he chose Frank. Well, except that he hoped to become closer to him and confiding seemed a place to start.

Frank looked confused. "Well obviously. Nothing's going to change until something happens, is it?"

"But things'll probably change by themselves sooner or later, even apart from time boxes. And someone else'll find one even if we don't," Gerard protested, not knowing if he wanted to be agreed or disagreed with.

Frank looked confused, almost upset. "But you have to do what you can. You always said you wanted to _try_ to do something that mattered, like that would matter even if nothing really mattered."

"But what I said is still true," said Gerard, not ready to be persuaded out of his gloom. "We're just any stupid people, nothing we do can make us _better_."

"But I like you to be just any stupid person. Even if you're just another person bigging yourself up for trying – I don't know. I want you to be that, I like that about you."

Gerard almost said something, probably to add nothing more to the discussion than "Oh," but stopped himself from doing even that. Frank looked at him, frowning. Gerard thought then about making a move. Something about Frank giving him all his attention and saying that he liked him made him think perhaps it was a good time, and had far too intoxicating an effect. He wondered for a moment if he'd gone into slow motion. But maybe it wasn't a good time. He thought about changing the subject by leaning forward and kissing Frank, but somehow the more he thought about it the less he could imagine actually doing it. Even less could he imagine dealing with the fall-out if he actually did it and it turned out badly. So clumsily, and rather late to do anything at all, he let the moment pass.

Right now there's a rustle behind them and Gerard and Frank grip each other's arms as they wheel round, both clutching at the bag Frank's holding. It's not what Gerard expected. He's surprised there wasn't more noise; it's a giant lion with wings and a woman's head. The head has long curling gold hair and a placid, self-satisfied expression. Gerard wonders if she's someone who's gone through extreme Metamorphosis. Sometimes it's not possible to do anything, not to mention people who get apathetic and odd and don't bother to Readjust after Metamorphosis. Often those people have lost someone who vanished. "Would you like to answer a question for me?" she asks, in a voice that rumbles below the surface.

"What kind of question?" asks Frank.

"A little riddle. I'd tell you something you want to know if you could give me the answer."

Frank and Gerard look at each other and nod. They straighten their backs, ready to be tested. Hopefully this is it, the big moment.

"Which creature in the morning goes on four legs, at mid-day on two, and in the evening upon three, and the more legs it has, the weaker it be?"

Gerard wants to say "That's not fair!" It's obviously an old riddle from before the end of the world, when time was different. They don't _have_ mornings, how are they supposed to know what creature does what in the mornings? Not to mention that the only animals they have left are unicorns.

"Do you have any idea?" he whispers to Frank.

"Nope. I mean, we've got to think why it would be weaker the more legs it had. The only reason I've got is that it trips up over them, but four isn't that many."

"Maybe it's a cow," says Gerard. They learnt about the cow at school, it's one of the few artifacts from life Before; a puffy, waterproof book for children. The book told them HERE IS A COW and COWS EAT GRASS and neglected to mention any issue with its legs beyond making it plain in pictures that it had four.

"Think we should go with cow just to give it a shot?" asks Frank.

Gerard pauses and looks at the ... whatever it is sitting looking at them patiently, an eyebrow raised. "Okay. There's more chance than if we say nothing, right?"

They turn round to face the creature again. "We've decided that we're going to say maybe it's a cow," says Gerard, feeling stupid.

There's a pause. "Afraid not," she says, and Frank, who Gerard now notices is rather unwisely not standing on the path, vanishes.

"Oh fuck," says Gerard, "Oh fuck." He looks all around him, but no Frank anywhere. Gerard's pretty sure he's not back at camp either. He's not anywhere and it's possible he exists nowhere anymore and Gerard can't deal with it. His throat hurts, he's going to choke up and he needs to think.

"You never _said_ there was a penalty if we got it wrong," he says to the creature, though it seems ridiculous to hang around quibbling, his voice tight and shaking.

"You got off lightly, I'm pretty sure I used to eat people," she says. She gets up and pads off between the trees, still making surprisingly little sound.

"Frank?" Gerard says when she's gone, because sometimes people go invisible. "Can you hear me?" Of course, nothing happens and Gerard turns and heads back to the others, almost running. It occurs to him on the way that the time bomb has gone with Frank.

"Franks, gone, he's vanished," he says, loud but breathless, before he's even reached the humps he knows are their tents.

"Did someone get him?" asks Bob.

"We had to answer a riddle and we got it wrong and he vanished. We have to go to the time mine."

"Okay. Okay," says Ray. "We should have a look round here first. Ask other people to have a bit of a search, maybe."

"I guess," says Gerard, "As long as it doesn't waste too much time."

He hates the searching, he keeps getting his hopes up every time he rounds a corner or sees a shadow and he keeps thinking Frank's with them like usual, only of course he's not.

"So we move on to the next phase," says Bob. Just because they haven't found him in the places they've been able to look doesn't mean he's not roaming around somewhere, not in the time mine at all. People have turned up years later after vanishing. But if Frank is in the time mine, he needs someone to get him out soon; the quicker people go in search the more hope they have of finding what they've lost.

"Who's going?" says Mikey.

"Me," says Gerard, a little surprised there should be any question about it. Then he remembers all this stuff about him _particularly_ caring about Frank doesn't count outside his own head and it's a little out of the blue him acting like he's Frank's brother or boyfriend or something. Frank himself wouldn't have automatically expected Gerard to be going all "Rescue mission! Now!" After all, lots of people, at least when they've been through a vanishing or two, just decide to keep an eye out rather than trekking off to the time mine every time. "It's just, I was there, you know?"

They have to have a good wash and pick fresh clothes before going up to the sky; they don't want to be picked off at sight if they come across any Requiescat people. They've found the nearest time mine ship and Gerard's psyching himself up when Ray says, "Wait, you'll need to play a ghoul game for Frank. Well, both of you."

It's true, no one comes out of the time mine with any time left in their hourglass unless they've stocked up beforehand, and in the case of the lost one, had someone else do it for them. It's all part of the ordeal. So they have to go all the way back down to the forest and find a ghost. Mikey squeezes his arm, then he, Ray and Bob go a little way off and turn their backs. Gerard crouches down and holds his hourglass in one hand. "I want a ghost," he says. "Honestly, I want to see you." Any ghosts hereabouts generally have to make themselves known when invited.

He takes a couple of moments to look up, in case nothing's there.

"You called?" says the man in front of him. He gives an inappropriate grin but then grows sober. "What do you want, are you offering a game?"

"I want to play for two people at once, me and a friend," says Gerard.

"Uh..." says the ghost, and a lawyer steps out from behind Gerard.

Gerard swings his arm in frustration. "Why do you have to be fucking _everywhere_. What do you want?"

"I'm afraid you don't have the right to play for someone who has no closer tie to you than friendship. We can't have anybody playing for just anybody, you know."

"I'll marry him, then," says Gerard, thinking of Ryan and Z. "Can I do that? In his absence?" It doesn't seem quite right that he should be able to.

"Hmmm. Let me take a moment," says the lawyer, and takes a bundle of papers out of his coat. "It seems you can, if you wish. Alright. Your name and that of the person you wish to marry?"

"Gerard Way and Frank Iero."

"Very well. Do you, Gerard Way, take Frank Iero to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

"Yes."

"Frank Iero takes Gerard Way to be his lawfully wedded husband," says the lawyer, and Gerard still thinks he's got a nerve despite the circumstances.

The ghost claps his hands. "Congratulations! I'm sure you'll be very happy together. Now let's get down to business." He indicates a chess board on a little table that wasn't there before.

Gerard's heart sinks; thinking of maneuvers and stuff isn't really his thing. On the bright side, he's not sure it's the ghost's either. There's a lot of peering really closely when Gerard makes a move, and dithering forever and swearing.

"So," says the ghost, trying to distract him, "You care a lot about this person you want to save? Hope you manage to find him, it'd be terrible if you got to the time mine and couldn't find him. I wonder if it'll be awkward afterwards, being married to him. He might wonder why you went to such trouble."

"Shut up, I'm thinking," says Gerard, though he knows that's the very reason he's talking. He tells himself that no one would really get pissy and think it was too forward of someone to save their life.

He makes a move and the ghost says "Oh."

"Oh," says Gerard, leaning over the board. He'd been cleverer than he realized, by which he means of course it was just a fluke of luck.

"Give it here, then," says the ghost. Gerard holds out his hourglass for him. He sucks it once, withdraws, and then again. Gerard's hourglass fills up and he hopes somewhere Frank's does too.

He hardly stays to watch the ghost go before hurrying off to find the others. "I did it."

"So you're a married man now," says Mikey with mock solemnity.

At least, thinks Gerard, if all this turns out alright, being married to someone is a good excuse to push the issue and find out if they like you, or ever could. He doesn't feel that shrinking away now Frank is gone; in fact he wishes quite bitterly he'd told him he had ... _feelings_ for him. At least he'd feel like he'd given him something, and that's what he wants most to have done right now, if Frank really doesn't exist anymore.

Somehow getting back to the time mine chamber convinces Gerard that they've wasted far too much time and it's bound to be too late. He manages not to say anything doom-ridden and the others all hug him before he goes in. As he goes in he tries to feel grateful just that he found someone he wants to find, and that in fact he has three other people he'd want to find, too.

Inside the time mine ship is a little room, made smaller because there's only a narrow path left down the middle; all the other space is taken up with clocks piled high. It gives Gerard unpleasant flashbacks to the marching clocks, though none of these seem to be moving of their own accord and they're only making a tick tock _sound_, not saying the words. He does jump when a voice goes "Cuckoo! Cuckoo!" This seems to be a signal because the clocks go crazy after that; deep bass chimes and "brrrng brrrng" noises. He sees the words on the wall first: Lost Property Cupboard. Then he realizes that there's a tunnel in the wall beneath the words. He casts one last look around the room, but the clocks don't tempt him to linger.

The tunnel goes downhill and soon swells out, the walls made of rock. Gerard can tell when he's in the mine proper; the tunnel gets close again and plunges into darkness which somehow doesn't stop him seeing all the stuff that seems to be blocking his way. Things for a start, so many many things, heaps of featureless boxes that don't look like they're made of metal or wood, books, clothes, mounds of jewelry, tables and chairs and cupboards, broken crockery, buildings even though they are surely too wide for the passage. There's people curled up amongst it all, seemingly asleep. And on top of all that there's scenes playing all the time, worse than any time storm, layered on top of each other so thick he can hardly see what's happening. They aren't just little scenes like he's seen in time storms, they go on and on without having to replay, like people's lives are happening down here.

Gerard inches forward and finds he can walk through it all; none of it is actually present enough to be in his way. He covers his eyes with his hands when stone walls loom up in front of him and doesn't look back to see if they're still there when he's stepped through them. He's just getting used to picking his way and wondering if humming would sound comforting or eerie in this place when he comes face to face with the lion creature again. She asks her riddle and he's about to say "You _know_ I don't fucking know," when he and Frank bloom up between the real him and the creature. Gerard waits resentfully for them to get it wrong and Frank to vanish again, but to his surprise he and Frank come back with the answer "A human?" The lion pauses, nods grudgingly then moves aside. Gerard hurries past without looking to see what happens to the scene. He still doesn't get that fucking riddle.

After that he has to push through all Gerard all the time. He's doing heroic stuff like fighting various fierce beasts – there's one of him riding a white unicorn thing, wearing armor and waving his fists, his mouth open in a no doubt warrior-like yell that Gerard almost laughs at as he hurries through. He's picking golden apples, spinning straw into gold, puzzling over another three boxes, coming out of houses with something under his arm looking shifty like he's stolen something. There's hundreds; most of them he can't tell right away what's happening because he just gets a brief glimpse. Then he walks slap bang into himself so they knock heads. He stops and looks around; patting himself down with the vague idea he's lost something. There's only one of him.

*

He doesn't know what happens after that but he's plodding uphill with the vague idea that he went all the way to the beginning of the world and is now being made to walk back past the end of it. His brain's going so much! So much! though he doesn't know what is so much. Gerard hears footsteps behind him and stops dead in horror before deciding to act natural and carry on walking. Now he thinks about it, maybe he remembers being told that someone was going to follow him and he should pretend he doesn't hear them. He imagines some kind of half beast or someone hard and neat with a knife. But he'd come here to find someone. He's going the wrong way, he should turn round after all, he's leaving without ... oh yes, Frank, he remembers Frank. What is Frank like again? He's _wholehearted_, he's thought that before, hasn't he, in a private sappy conversations with himself kind of way. But he's not supposed to look round for Frank's own good, oh now he's got it, &lt;/i&gt;Frank&lt;/i&gt; is walking behind him.

Gerard can't believe Frank's so near him, it seems like he's been gone ages, longer than he knew Frank even, like he was some odd incident he never forgot. He was at school with him, wasn't he, and barely knew him, and then he started mattering more and more because he was Frank and he knew him. The footsteps falter and Gerard's breath gets thin. He takes two slow, slow steps, not daring either to look back or walk on without Frank. He takes a third step and hears Frank again.

He's so tired walking back through the passage. It takes him ages to notice there's nothing filling it this time. And then there's light. He can see where the tunnel changes to wood. He's back in the clock room. All the clocks are quiet and Gerard can't believe he did it, he came back, going to the time mine is in the past. He still doesn't dare to look behind him as he picks his way across the room, though he can hear Frank stumbling. He opens the door and there's Mikey, who hugs him just as he did before he left. "Frank!" Mikey exclaims into his hair.

Finally Gerard turns round. Frank looks pale but he's smiling, coming towards Gerard and putting a hand out to touch his wrist. Gerard tries to hug him but something gets in his way.

"I've got a time box," Frank says. They all step away, somehow taken aback.

"Shall we open it?" says Ray after a while.

They look at it and pause a little longer. It's an ordinary wooden box of medium size. "On the count of three," says Gerard, though really he wants to suggest they put it away for a rainy day so he can look forward to it properly and – and _prepare_ himself. He never believed it when people said no one really wanted to find what they were looking for.

It's a cube, like light all packaged up, like jellied light, blue and yellow at once, and it's really lots of little cubes piled neatly together. Gerard would like to eat one but they're all beginning to diffuse as he watches as if they're being blown away. Except it's really more like the old day is being blown away and this new time is filling up its place. Gerard's smiling, his head tipped back to the bright, rich blue sky. The air's warm and soft.

"It looks like it's a really fucking nice time box," say Frank.

"It's lovely," says Gerard. It feels like everything must of course be going to be alright, and Frank will therefore turn out to want Gerard, so serenely so that it's already making Gerard a little nervous. Somehow it seems worse for things not to turn into a sudden happy ending when they already kind of have. Expectations being actually met are a weird new kind of pressure.

*

Requiescat is gone with the wind and anyone who finds a time box gets showered with money and free air-ships, so they have a few good hours. Come bedtime Gerard finds himself living in an air-ship for two with Frank. They are married, after all, which the others gleefully mention as often as possible.

They sit on the bed side by side. This is either going to be horribly, painfully awkward or what he so wants.

"It's so weird to see you again. It feels like you were gone so long and now you're here where before there was nothing."

Frank pushes his arm. "Yeah, you conjured me up with your fascinating and mysterious powers. I know."

"I'm sorry you're stuck with me legally," says Gerard casually, looking away and forcing himself to look back.

"Like I care, you had to do it so you could play a ghoul game for me and come get me out of the time mine. Oh, I'm _so_ angry with you."

"Still. I hope you don't mind too much," says Gerard, knowing he's pushing and hoping so much Frank will get what he's pushing for.

Frank turns his face towards Gerard's and Gerard can feel his skin crawling all over in a really good way. "I don't mind being married to you," says Frank. "I don't mind at all."

Oh yes, Gerard can feel Frank's breath on his cheek. Frank looks at him, eyebrow raised. They both lean in at the same time and their mouths meet surprisingly slowly. Gerard pulls back a little and draws his tongue along the line of Frank's lower lip before Frank puts his tongue out to meet it. They tongue the insides of each others' mouths, slow and flickering, Frank clasping Gerard's cheek with his hand. Then Frank pushes Gerard down on the bed and goes in faster and harder, teeth pressing against lips, breathless and slick mouths sliding.

Frank leans back on his arms so instead of lying on top of Gerard he's half-sitting on him, their groins lined up. Gerard pushes his hips up at the same time as Frank pushes down and he can feel Frank's hard dick meet his own erection through their trousers. He holds Frank's hips so he can move him back and forth, though Frank's already doing that hard enough that Gerard's dimly aware it's chafing his cock, and tries to lean up far enough to kiss him. Their mouths meet clumsy and wet. Frank shoves a hand down Gerard's trousers and after thrashing it around impatiently gets a firm grasp on his cock. He squeezes it, fairly lightly, thankfully and runs his thumb over the head. Gerard can hear himself making little "ah" sounds. Frank pushes a hand down his own trousers and starts thrusting into his hand and also against his other hand which is underneath him cupping Gerard's cock. The added friction makes Gerard feel his orgasm building, all set up to go off in a sequence of strokes. He undoes Frank's trousers so at least one of Frank's hands has room to move and, a little tentatively, puts his hand round it as well. Frank grabs his hand and moves it up and down his cock with his own, Gerard trying to get a good look at it, plump and red between their fingers.

"Wait," says Gerard, pulling Frank's hand out of his trousers. "Lie down."

"Can't we just—"

"No come on, let me suck you."

Frank lies down, his fingers curled round his dick at the base, and draws a deep, shaking breath. Gerard flops over onto his stomach and elbow-walks up between Frank's legs. He gives Frank's cock a long look that probably comes off as suspicious, puts his fingers above Frank's and puts the head in his mouth. It's already damp with pre-come and tastes pretty much how he'd expect. He goes down a little further, and gets an up and down rhythm going. He would be trying to get himself off at the same time but he doesn't want to be too distracted. Frank's gently moving his hips; it's not bothering Gerard but he has to get the timing right. Gerard can feel Frank staring at him intensely. He thinks he's about to come and he's right. Frank moans , his cock jerks and Gerard's mouth fills up. He swallows quickly before he has time to taste. Frank's cock jerks weakly a couple times more and Gerard keeps sucking until Frank bats him away.

"Come on, you," says Frank, sitting up and tugging Gerard's trousers down around his thighs. He jerks Gerard off in less than a minute. They both lie on their backs for a moment, smiling and stretching, then Frank starts taking his clothes off properly. When Gerard follow suit, Frank says, "So have you liked me for a while?"

Gerard rolls his eyes, trying not to feel exposed. "Yeah."

Frank laughs. "So did I. I mean, I liked you. I bet I liked you longer. Sometimes I thought you were interested but then, I don't know, I'd change my mind. I wish I'd just come out with it, it's not like anything terrible would have happened even if you didn't want me. Apart from you not wanting me of course, because that is really, really good." He leans on his elbow and looks at Gerard, trying to convey seriousness for the last bit.

"I was always going to get round to, you know, saying it, holding it in reserve. It was partly what made me panic so much when you were gone because I wished I'd told you I ... felt something about you." Frank kisses him almost before he's finished speaking. Gerard closes his eyes and tries to see Frank both near, here with him in every possible way, and far, not only as he was when he was vanished but with that uncrossed distance between them. It feels so odd and extra-real to be on the other side of that distance.

"But then you got to marry me. What could be a better way to find out if someone returns your feelings?"

*

It was a good enough way it seems, and everything seems to be all lined up. All Gerard has to worry about is whatever eventually fucks everything up, but that's all the status quo anyone has to build on anyway.

"I want to get rid of this fucking time bomb, I don't know how long I've been lugging it about," says Bob.

So that's the next thing on their plate and it shouldn't be daunting. Their new air-ships are good and fast so they feel well prepared. They spend a few weeks exploring the skies in a way they haven't before, going up high and making broad, circular sweeps up and down. Often Gerard and Frank leave their own ship to float on auto-pilot, which is probably a bad habit, and travel with the others but then again sometimes they prefer to be alone. When Gerard thinks about it, they've been alone surprisingly little but it's easy now. Well, of course it's easy, Gerard's still at the stage where Frank's interesting when he's sitting still saying nothing.

Gerard can't imagine it taking long to find an angel, now that everything seems so easy. Sure enough it is only a few weeks, just enough time to be pleasant, before he sees the other air-ship put on speed and swoop down.

"Shit, I wish we were over there," says Frank, who was in the act of pulling his trousers back on.

They lean out of the window; they can see the other ship beneath them and Gerard guesses there's an angel under that. There's a loud bang that vibrates through the ship and a bundle of gold and flame shoots upwards. It regains some control as it flies past them, holding its limbs straight as if it's being transported rather than ejected through the air. Gerard glimpses a grave, solemn face, a little curdled with rage but still beautiful in a stark, alarming way. A huge spiral of gold sparks falls in the angel's wake and Gerard watches the outside edge dwindle into blue sky feeling both victorious and a little frightened that they achieved what they set out to do and have the power to do so.

  


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**The Fleeting 3/3**   
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End file.
